Datshiane Navanayagam is an award-winning investigative journalist and versatile broadcaster, working across both television and radio. Datshiane has reported for all the UK’s flagship current affairs programmes, including BBC’s Panorama, Channel 4’s Dispatches and Unreported World and ITV’s Tonight. She also reports for BBC Countryfile on stories affecting rural communities, most recently looking at the rise of youth homelessness. Her 2018 film for Dispatches, ‘Working and Homeless’, told the story of Britain’s hidden crisis of working people forced to sleep on the streets due to high rents. Her 2020 BBC Panorama programme exposed the hidden traps of the government’s shared ownership scheme and her 2023 ITV Tonight programme looked at Britain’s renting crisis where she grilled the then Secretary of...
Datshiane Navanayagam is an award-winning investigative journalist and versatile broadcaster, working across both television and radio.
Datshiane has reported for all the UK’s flagship current affairs programmes, including BBC’s Panorama, Channel 4’s Dispatches and Unreported World and ITV’s Tonight. She also reports for BBC Countryfile on stories affecting rural communities, most recently looking at the rise of youth homelessness.
Her 2018 film for Dispatches, ‘Working and Homeless’, told the story of Britain’s hidden crisis of working people forced to sleep on the streets due to high rents. Her 2020 BBC Panorama programme exposed the hidden traps of the government’s shared ownership scheme and her 2023 ITV Tonight programme looked at Britain’s renting crisis where she grilled the then Secretary of State for Housing, Michael Gove, on the government’s record.
Datshiane experienced homelessness as a child, and again in her twenties. These experiences, she says, cemented her desire to become a journalist, and to tell stories that are important, relevant and give a voice to those who aren’t always represented – particularly around Britain’s housing crisis.
On radio, Datshiane is a regular reporter for BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs strand, File on 4 Investigates. Her 2023 programme exposed the existence of modern slavery in the UK’s care sector, winning the Human Trafficking Foundation’s Anti-Slavery Day Awards for ‘Best Broadcast Piece’ at the Houses of Parliament.
She presents The Conversation on the BBC World Service: a weekly programme which puts two extraordinary women in the spotlight, interviewing them on a shared experience or expertise. Her programmes have featured a range of guests, from Oscar nominated film directors to women who have experienced suicide loss. Datshiane has been praised for her sensitive and empathetic interviewing, with Radio Times calling one programme, in which she speaks to two women coming to terms with each of their families’ history of enslaved and enslaver ancestors, ‘a cathartic and moving listen.’
Datshiane is also a warm and engaging live broadcaster who has presented Woman’s Hour and The Media Show on BBC Radio 4, and Weekend Breakfast and Drive on BBC 5 Live.
In 2016 the radio critic Gillian Reynolds praised Datshiane’s series of One to One on BBC Radio 4. The programme explored education and social mobility with writer Val McDermid and saxophonist Soweto Kinch; Reynolds stated that “Navanayagam is a broadcaster to listen out for”.
