Annick Cojean is one of France's most widely revered journalists. Senior reporter for French daily newspaper Le Monde since 1981, she published an interview of Lady Diana Spencer and numerous description of famous personnalities that let her known from the public. Her international reportings about violences against women in war zones are some of her noteworthy works as an international correspondent. Since 2010, she presides over the jury for the Prix Albert Londres, (the French equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) which she won in 1996 for her series of five reports entitled 'Les Mémoires de la Shoah' (Memoires from the Holocaust).

In her latest book, Je ne serais pas arrivée là si...27 femmes racontent (I would not have arrived there if ... 27 women tell), Annick Cojean recounts her own experience and that of 27 women including Patti Smith, Joan Baez, Marianne Faithfull, Brigitte Bardot, Nicole Kidman, as well as prominent writers and politicians beginning the interview with a simple sentence " I would not have arrived there if..." In these interviews , these women tell their dreams, their meetings, their fights ... All in all everything that made them who they are now.

Annick Cojean was involved too in the documentary Le Cri étouffé , directed by Manon Loizeau, which investigated rape as a political weapon during the Syrian Civil War (see below). Her book Gaddafi's Harem, uncovered the systematic rape and torture of women during Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

Leslie Barnes is Senior Lecturer and Convenor of French Studies at the Australian National University. Her first book, Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature(Nebraska, 2014), studies the impact of colonialism on the modern French novel, focusing specifically on the works of André Malraux, Marguerite Duras, and Linda Lê. Her current project offers a comparative analysis of literary and cinematic narratives that engage with questions of sex work, mobility, and human rights in Southeast Asia. She has authored and edited publications on these and other subjects in Contemporary French Civilization, French Cultural Studies, French Forum, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, and Modern Language Notes.

Dr Gemma King is Lecturer in French Studies at the Australian National University. Her research interests include French cinema, museum and cultural studies, and her work has been published in Contemporary French Civilization, French Cultural Studies, The Australian Journal of French Studies, The Conversation and numerous edited volumes. Her first book Decentring France: Multilingualism and Power in Contemporary French Cinema was published with Manchester University Press in 2017 and she is currently writing the monograph Jacques Audiard for Manchester’s French Film Directors series.

Join us for a conversation with one of the most important female reporters of our time, to talk about inspiring women in times where the #Metoo movement became so important.