Why women’s stories of war matter. Ukraine in a global context.
Date and time:
Wednesday 25 March, 2026
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
Institut français
17 Queensberry Place
London
SW7 2DT
Join us for a conversation on women’s experiences of war, inspired by stories from Ukraine collected by the Ukrainian writer Yuliia Iliukha in her book My Women. These are diverse, often unseen and silenced experiences:painful, intimate, sometimes even funny. They rarely make newspaper headlines, yet they are no less important than frontline reports or updates from sites of destruction.
Together with Christina Lamb OBE,Chief Foreign Correspondent at The Sunday Times, one of Britain’s leading foreign journalists and bestselling author of Our Bodies Their Battlefields and What War Does to Women, we will discuss why women’s stories matter and how they resonate within a broader global context.
Stories of women’s wartime experiences allow us to better understand the trauma of contemporary war and the ways it shapes daily life. They stay with us. They are remembered, retold, and carried forward. They bear witness, cultivate solidarity, and help us endure.
Speaker
Yuliia Iliukha
Yuliia Iliukha is a poet, prose writer and journalist, born in 1982 in Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine. She is the author of several books for adults and children. Her poems and prose stories have been translated into over fifteen languages. Iliukha has received awards, including the Oles Honchar International Ukrainian-German Literary Prize, the Smoloskyp Prize, and the Rotahorn Literaturpreis. My Women won the BBC Book of the Year 2024 in Ukraine and was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize 2025. The book has been published in the US, France, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Greece, Lithuania and Italy, with translations forthcoming in Bulgaria, Latvia, Spain and Finland. Illukha is currently working on a novel.
Moderator
Christina Lamb
Covering conflicts across the globe for the past 38 years, Christina Lamb is recognised as one of the world's leading foreign correspondents and is Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Sunday Times as well as a bestselling author.
Her dispatches with the Afghan mujaheddin fighting the Soviet Union saw her named Young Journalist of the Year at the age of 22. She has since reported everywhere from Israel to Ukraine, Syria to Zimbabwe and been awarded Foreign Correspondent of the Year seven times as well as Europe’s top war reporting prize, the Prix Bayeux, the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from both the Society of Editors and Women in Journalism as well as the Chesney Gold Medal for promoting the understanding of war, previously awarded to Henry Kissinger and Winston Churchill. Christina's work has earned her international renown not only as a ground-breaking journalist but as a campaigner for women impacted by war. She has authored ten books, including Our Bodies Their Battlefields, What War Does to Women and co-writing I Am Malala with Malala Yousafzai.
She is a Global envoy for UN Education Cannot Wait, on the board of the Institute for
