For almost sixteen years, The Pixel Project has worked at the intersection of social media, pop culture, the Arts, journalism, activism, and new technologies to shine a light on the the many ways violence against women (VAW) affects the lives of women and girls in communities and cultures worldwide.
When we first began conducting interviews, we focused on blog interviews which remain one of the major pillars of our social media-driven advocacy and educational work. As we grew as an anti-VAW organisation, our ever-expanding efforts to provide multiple platforms for people from all walks of life to speak out about VAW meant that we started including livestream interviews on YouTube which also help activists, allies, and survivors tell their stories and share their ideas with others first-hand.
In 2024, we marched on with our annual interview-format blogging campaigns series:
- Our long-running monthly Inspirational Interview series highlighting the excellent but little-known work of many anti-VAW activists and organisations from around the world.
- Our ongoing Survivor Stories Interview series which provides a platform for survivors of VAW to speak out about their experience and how they rebuilt their lives after the violence.
- The Voices of Dads Against VAW interview series which is the continuation of our “30 For 30” series – a platform for dads worldwide to speak out about sexism, misogyny, and violence against women in the gaming community and industry.
- Read For Pixels Blog Interviews series featuring authors speaking up about VAW.
Together, these interviews form a striking tapestry of ideas, stories, and calls-to-action from remarkable individuals, communities, and allies that are at the front lines of bringing the change that is so desperately needed to end VAW.
If you have missed any of our blog interview campaigns this year or are new to The Pixel Project’s work, this selection of this year’s 16 best Pixel Project interviews will be a great starting point.
It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.
Introduction by Regina Yau. Written and compiled by Regina Yau.
Inspired to support The Pixel Project’s anti-violence against women work? Make a donation to us today OR buy a copy of our 1st poetry collection, UNDER HER EYE. All donations and net proceeds from book sales go towards supporting our campaigns, programmes, and initiatives.
Pixel Project Interview Selection #1: Inspirational Interview – Amanda Parker, Senior Director, The AHA Foundation – United States of America
Amanda Parker has 13 years of experience working to end harmful practices in the US. She has worked in dozens of states and federally to successfully enact laws that address violence against women and also serves on the steering committee of the U.S. Coalition to End Child Marriage. She has facilitated trainings on honour violence, female genital mutilation (FGM), and forced and child marriage for more than 2,000 professionals, and has supported survivors of these abuses to help them find protection and the services they need. When asked how boys and men can help with efforts to end VAW, she said: “The fight against violence against women will not be won without the participation of men and boys. We need them to act as allies, working alongside us in our efforts. Starting with listening and learning all the way through to holding each other accountable, standing up for what is right and speaking out, men and boys must take action.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #2: Voices of Dads Against VAW Interview – Andrew Bockhorst – United States of America
Andrew Bockhorst is a former archaeologist, cancer survivor, and longtime fan of Horror. In 2023, he picked up his extended family and moved from Massachusetts to Italy, where his 8-year-old son is acquiring dual citizenship and learning Italian. When asked how fathers and other male role models can get young men and boys to take an interest in helping to stop VAW, he said: “It starts with the father’s/male role model’s own attitude toward women, and what behaviour they model toward women for their boys, I think. Acting respectful in my own family, teaching my son to do the same, and speaking up when we see disrespect and violence are things I can do. Also, boys have to be taught to reject the idea of dismissing female empowerment and representation, to not roll their eyes at media showing strong female figures and characters. Exposing them to stories and biographies featuring such figures and enthusiastically holding them up as people to be admired might go some distance in combatting the moribund old misogynist culture we’ve inherited.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #3: Inspirational Interview – Arzu Geybullayeva, Journalist and Columnist– Azerbaijan
Arzu Geybullayeva is a writer and columnist with a special focus on digital authoritarianism and its implications on human rights and press freedom. She has written for Al Jazeera, Eurasianet, CODA, Open Democracy, and Radio Free Europe, with a byline on CNN International. She is also a regional editor for South Caucasus and Turkey at Global Voices. In 2014, Arzu was featured on BBC 100 Women Changemakers. Since 2015, she has been involved in various projects focussing on the safety of women journalists online. When asked what her advice to anti-VAW activists working in the media is, she said: “Find alternatives, and if not, try creating your own alternatives. Keep your friends informed. Talk to your family members, if they will listen and understand. In countries where it is possible, talk to elected officials; remind them and keep reminding them. Find allies, and work together distributing the tasks. […] Most importantly, despite all the challenges, please don’t stay silent. Talk about it even if you think it will have no impact. Because although it may not seem like it now, it actually does; voices do matter, stories do matter, and being the voice, or the story, or covering it, matters too.
Pixel Project Interview Selection #4: Inspirational Interview – Cheryl Horn, Activist, The Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women’s Movement – United States of America
Cheryl Horn, Magazu Nahzi (Standing in the Rain), an Assiniboine from Fort Belknap, Montana, became a member of the Murdered or Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement in July of 2018 after the disappearances of her niece, Tristen Gray, and in 2020, Tristen’s sister, Selena Bell Not Afraid. She is a fierce advocate for families and survivors of missing, murdered and trafficked individuals. She works tirelessly to change laws, find resources, media, lawyers, and more advocates for Indigenous families. In 2022, she was awarded USA Today National Woman of the Year, along with 10 other very distinguished recipients. She has this advice for activists and advocates fighting against violence against Indigenous women across the world: “If I could give any advice to activists and advocates it would be this: do not be afraid […] The truth is out there, and it is up to us to reveal it. Find a group to join (it’s awesome that these are now a thing) on social media and get the support you need. I have worked with Sovereign Bodies Institute on a handbook that can be found online. I have seen similar handbooks become available in other outlets. Women are powerful and we are not afraid to stand up for others.This is our power.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #5: Read For Pixels Interview – Dana Cameron – United States of America
Dana Cameron writes across many genres, but especially crime and speculative fiction. Her award-winning work is inspired by her career in archaeology, and her Emma Fielding archaeology mysteries have been aired on Hallmark’s Movies & Mysteries Channel. Her latest book is Anna Hoyt: A Novel of Colonial Crime (October 2024). She is also a longtime Read For Pixels authors. When asked why everyone should support efforts to end violence against women, she said: “It’s a hell of a thing to realise that half the world’s population experiences some form of gender-based aggression and violence. How much pain and suffering would end if everyone could find a way to stop just one instance before it happened? Education is the first thing and legislation goes hand and hand with that. If you want to look at it in purely economic terms, how much productivity would be added, and how much money would be saved from losing work, having to move, just to escape an abuser? How much emotional and physical energy would be saved without the lifelong need to constantly be on guard, even in the most innocuous of situations? It’s not just a woman who suffers, it’s her family and community. That’s why everyone should work to stop it.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #6: Read For Pixels Interview – Errick Nunnally – United States of America
Errick Nunnally was raised in Boston and served in the USMC before earning an art degree. His latest novel is The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Waiting from Clash Books. He also has multiple short stories in magazines as well as anthologies such as The Pixel Project’s Giving The Devil His Due. When asked why everyone should support efforts to end violence against women, he said: “Men often cite their relationships to women as inspiration to support stopping violence against women. I think rational empathy is good enough. For instance, even if I weren’t married to a woman and had two daughters, I believe boys should be raised differently. There’s a serious deficit in EQ and other guidance that allows violence against women to blossom and flourish. Let’s raise our boys differently to start and go from there.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #7: Inspirational Interview –Fatou Warkha Sambe. Journalist and Founder of WarkhaTV – Senegal
Fatou Warkha Sambe, a passionate Senegalese feminist journalist, is dedicated to using her profession as a powerful tool in the fight against inequality and gender-based violence in Senegal. She has been elected municipal councillor in the commune of Pikine Nord. In 2023 she won the Ouagadougou Partnership Women Leadership Accelerator (OWLA) programme and the third Francophone prize for gender equality 2023. When asked what her advice to anti-VAW activists working in the media is, she said: “That they can change things, because the media are a powerful tool, accessible to everyone. That they must be able to use media to denounce the injustices and violence that women suffer, because there is nothing more noble than this cause and this fight allows us to change lives and influence generations and generations for a fairer, more equitable and violence-free future.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #8: Inspirational Interview –Hawon Jung – Journalist – South Korea
Hawon Jung is a journalist and author of Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement and What It Means For The World. Her coverage of South Korea’s #MeToo movement for Agence France-Presse was shortlisted in the Awards for Editorial Excellence by the Society of Publishers in Asia, and her book was chosen as one of the best books of 2023 by The Economist magazine. Her writings and commentary on women’s rights issues have been featured in the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and the BBC, among others. In her recent interview with The Pixel Project, Jung shared some advice for journalists looking to cover the issue of VAW: “Listen, report, and write with thought and care. In a place where violence against women is considered a taboo or non-issue, victims of such violence often pay a huge personal price for speaking out or publicly sharing their stories with journalists. Naturally, covering the issue takes more time, effort and energy for journalists and carries more risks for interviewees. But when done right, these stories can help make a real difference in society. So please listen to survivors attentively and try to capture their stories in ways that are not only thorough and accurate, but also respectful of both your sources and your readers.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #9: Read For Pixels Interview – Kelley Armstrong – Canada
Kelley Armstrong is a bestselling author across multiple genres who believes experience is the best teacher, though she’s been told this shouldn’t apply to writing her murder scenes. To craft her books, she has studied aikido, archery and fencing. She sucks at all of them. She has also crawled through very shallow cave systems and climbed half a mountain before chickening out. She is however an expert coffee drinker and a true connoisseur of chocolate-chip cookies. When asked why everyone should support efforts to end violence against women, she said: “It is so pervasive that even when my stories aren’t about that, it often lurks in the background (some character in the story is dealing with or has dealt with it, often in a secondary way, through a friend or relative). And even that is far from actually representing the statistics correctly. It’s trauma that reaches far beyond the victim/survivor and trauma that affects everyone – men and women.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #10: Inspirational Interview – Larysa Denysenko, Writer, Lawyer, and Human Rights Defender – Ukraine
Larysa Denysenko is a writer, lawyer, and human rights defender who has authored more than 20 books for adults and children. She works on the topic of war sexual crimes and in the fields of criminal justice and the protection of children’s and women’s rights. She has won a Supreme Court award “for loyalty to the law.” In Kyiv, in March 2022, she wrote the children’s book Children of the Air-Raid Siren, which was published by Vydavnytvo in July 2022. It is an advocacy book directed at the protection of Ukrainian children from the Russian occupiers. When asked how boys and men can help with efforts to end VAW, she said: “Men are often offended and do not like it when they are associated with rapists. They take offense at the statistics and deny their involvement in sexual crimes: we are not like that, don’t make us rapists. In my opinion, a fairer response would be to listen to the problem, and to understand that statistics do not accuse, but point to reality. And to think about what can be done with those men who create these statistics with their violent actions. Think about sex education, talk about sexual consent, realise the seriousness of sexism, and encourage companies to end discrimination at work.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #11: Inspirational Interview – Lauren Kendall, CEO of Survivor Spaces Oxfordshire – United Kingdom
As a survivor of childhood sexual violence (CSV), Lauren Kendall is a passionate advocate for supporting children and families that have experienced sexual violence. Now that she is also mummy to her own amazing daughter, working to end violence against women and girls has never felt more important. Lauren has been CEO of Survivor Space Oxfordshire for nearly two years and is incredibly proud of the amazing work the charity, team, volunteers, and board do for survivors in Oxfordshire. When asked what could be done to encourage more men and boys to actively participate in efforts to end VAW, she said: “I think it’s important for society as a whole to realise that there is an epidemic of violence against women and girls and we need to work together to stop it! Education is vital. Feminist men and boys need to be encouraged and the broken systems that allow perpetrators to get away with horrific crimes and continually reoffend need to be fixed.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #12: Inspirational Interview – Dr Luisa Ortiz Perez, Founder, Vita-Activa.org – Mexico and the United States of America
As the co-founder of Vita-Activa.org, Dr Pérez conceptualised and launched a helpline to aid women journalists and activists facing online violence and gender-based harassment. She has worked for NPR, WNYC and the BBC, and was an executive manager for Yahoo! Hispanic Americas and Televisa Interactive Media. A former JSK Journalism Fellow from Stanford University, she holds a PhD in Ideology and Discourse Analysis from the University of Essex and is a certified Psychological First Aid Provider from Johns Hopkins University. When asked how we can end VAW, she said: “To put a stop to VAW we need to be more creative and less complacent with systems and institutions. Quoting Audre Lorde: ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.’ We need to engage in systemic change and do that in a very comprehensive way. Until then, we continue to oppose, challenge and fight one day at a time.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #13: Inspirational Interview – Mia Landsem, Ethical Hacker, Digital Investigator, and Author – Norway
Mia Landsem is an award-winning Norwegian author, writer, speaker, and ethical hacker. She has been working to fight image abuse and digital violence for many years. Mia has written a best-selling children’s book about how to be safe online and has done hundreds of lectures about image-based abuse and digital safety. She has won several prizes for her work in helping victims of online image abuse, hacking, and fraud. When talking about what can be done to move the needle online VAW, she said: “It’s time we put the blame where it belongs, on the abuser! As with everything else in the world, we must make sure to stop victim shaming, put responsibility on social media actors who make money on platforms that spread abuse material, and ensure good education for the youth. The media also has a long way to go, in not calling this ‘revenge porn’ but calling it what it actually is: a digital sexual assault.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #14: Voices of Dads Against VAW Interview – Shannon Miller – Australia
Shannon Miller works in the Family Violence sector in Australia and spent 10 years with Child Protection. He is the father of an amazing 5-year-old boy. When asked how fathers and other male role models can get young men and boys to take an interest in helping to stop VAW, he said: “All children start their lives mimicking their mothers and fathers; if we want our young men to play a role in preventing violence, it starts with us. It doesn’t come down to if we are physically violent. It’s the jokes we make, the comments we make, how we pull up a mate that makes a sexist joke, it’s the shows, movies and music we enjoy. It’s how we communicate with our partners and family. Do we control the finances? Do we ask where our partner is going or who they are with? Do we control their social lives? Do we prioritise our own careers over theirs? These are all major influences and drivers of future violence against women.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #15: Survivor Stories – Dr Tamara MC, Child Marriage and Human Trafficking Expert – United States of America
Dr. Tamara MC is a cult, child marriage, and human trafficking Lived Experience Expert who advocates for girls and women to live free from gender-based violence and coercive control. Her Ph.D. is in Applied Linguistics, and she researches how language manipulates vulnerable populations. Tamara attended Columbia University and has published more than 60 essays in publications such as the New York Times. When asked what advice she would give to other victims and survivors, she said: “Our timelines are all different. Some people are able to leave their situations quickly and move on quickly, but for others of us, it takes years and years. It’s so important not to compare our healing timeline with anyone else’s. I think it’s really important to understand that even though we may not physically leave a situation, we are still doing the work. From the earliest age, I remember making plans of leaving and what I’d do when I did leave. I had years of working through my eventual fleeing. Those were such important years for me, even though I was physically still in my situation.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #16: Inspirational Interview – Tobore Mit Ovuorie, Journalist – Nigeria
Tobore Ovuorie is a dogged, multiple award-winning investigative journalist, freedom of speech laureate and documentary filmmaker with a niche for development and multimedia stories. She mainly investigates human rights abuses, corruption, and health and regulatory failures. Her works, which are always hard-hitting and spark societal discussions with lives being impacted positively, demonstrate how media can be used as a vehicle for advocacy and have been instrumental in breaking the silence that surrounds certain forms of violence against women. When asked how boys and men can help with efforts to end VAW, she said: “Honestly, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to get men and boys to help end VAW because different approaches do have cultural contexts to them. However, using sports as a platform to reach and influence a wide audience is a universal strategy and effective method to be deployed. Open and honest discussions about VAW should be encouraged during sporting activities with the impact and role men and boys could play in ending it being the core of such talks.”
Photo Credits:
- Amanda Parker – Courtesy of The AHA Foundation
- Andrew Bockhorst – Courtesy of Andrew Bockhorst
- Arzu Geybullayeva – Courtesy of Arzu Geybullayeva
- Cheryl Horn – Courtesy of Cheryl Horn
- Dana Cameron – Courtesy of Dana Cameron
- Errick Nunnally – Courtesy of Errick Nunnally
- Fatou Warkha Sambe – Courtesy of Fatou Warkha Sambe
- Hawon Jung – Courtesy of Hawon Jung
- Kelley Armstrong – Courtesy of Kelley Armstrong
- Larysa Denysenko – Courtesy of Larysa Denysenko
- Lauren Kendall – Courtesy of Lauren Kendall
- Dr Luisa Ortiz Perez – Courtesy of Dr Luisa Ortiz Perez
- Mia Landsem – Courtesy of Mia Landsem
- Shannon Miller – Courtesy of Shannon Miller
- Dr Tamara MC – Courtesy of Dr Tamara MC
- Tobore Mit Ovuorie – Courtesy of Tobore Mit Ovuorie