For almost seventeen 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 that also help activists, allies, and survivors tell their stories and share their ideas with others first-hand.
In 2025, we marched on with our annual interview-format blogging campaigns and livestream 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 new History For Pixels livestream sessions that provide a platform for history experts to discuss violence against women during Women’s History Month;
- Read For Pixels blog interviews featuring authors, poets, and editors 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 blog and livestream interviews will be a great starting point. As with last year’s selection, this year’s list will include a range of our livestreamed interviews and panel sessions on YouTube during which authors, advocates, and activists speak eloquently and thoughtfully about VAW and what can be done about it. We hope that the stories we shared motivate you to join the effort to end VAW.
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 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 – Alia Whitney-Johnson, Founder and CEO, Emerge Lanka – Sri Lanka
Alia Whitney-Johnson is a social entrepreneur with 20 years of experience working with children who’ve survived trauma, abuse, and exploitation. She founded Emerge Global and Emerge Sri Lanka Foundation to support teen survivors of sexual abuse in healing, becoming self-sufficient, and leading change. Alia has worked across Asia, Latin America and the US, centring deep listening, youth leadership, and systemic transformation. She holds degrees from MIT and Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. When asked about what needs to be done to end VAW, she said: “Ending violence against women requires a systemic, sustained, and collective effort. No single organisation, law, or campaign can dismantle the complex web of patriarchy, stigma, poverty, and impunity that enables violence to persist. We must address root causes and transform the systems that survivors interact with—justice, education, media, community. This means centring survivor voices in reform, equipping frontline workers with trauma-informed tools, challenging harmful norms, and creating conditions where people are safe, seen, and supported.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #2: Inspirational Interview – Binita Shrestha, Senior Associate, Prevention Collaborative –Worldwide
Binita Shrestha is an international development practitioner with 20 years of experience in social and behaviour change (SBC) programming, social norms, life skills, and violence prevention across Asia and the Middle East. Over the past decade, Binita has focused extensively on violence prevention, designing and implementing programmes on intimate partner violence prevention and providing technical accompaniment and mentorship to a diverse range of partners, including women’s rights organisations, adolescent focussed programmes, faith-based institutions, and the UN, ensuring evidence-based, high-quality implementation of violence prevention programmes. When asked about what needs to be done order to end VAW, she said: “What I’ve learned is that ending violence against women takes long-term, systemic, and collective action. Real change means going beyond individual incidents to transform the beliefs and systems that enable violence. Prevention and response must go hand in hand. For me, prevention starts early by promoting gender-equitable attitudes, healthy relationships, and non-violent expressions of masculinity from a young age. It also means supporting community-led efforts driven by women’s rights organisations. Their leadership must be central, not just recognised but actively supported and resourced.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #3: History For Pixels Livestream Panel – Dr Megha Kumar, Historian – India and the United Kingdom
Dr Megha Kumar is a Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate from the University of Oxford. She is an established gender historian and the author of the seminal work Communalism and Sexual Violence in India: The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Conflict. She speaks at conferences and media outlets on the specific gender-based consequences of ethnic conflict, nationalist politics and religious movements, and on strategies to prevent violence against minorities and disadvantaged groups. During her History For Pixels livestream session When History Does Not Repeat Itself: Lessons From The Past About Ending Violence Against Women, she said: “…one question obviously that we are asking here is what are the forms of violence that have been abolished and why did that happen and what lessons can we draw from history because of its multifaceted nature. And because it’s a discipline, it’s grown and become so much richer over the last 200 years all over the world. We can now ask other questions such as: what were the conditions that led certain communities or in certain contexts to not have that kind of violence at all […] so instead of just looking at the abolishment of history, which is absolutely vital, history allows us to get lessons by asking a different question.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #4: History For Pixels Livestream Panel – Dr Rebecca Turkington, Historian – United States of America
Dr. Rebecca Turkington is a fellow at the Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace & Security. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge where her research focused on global women’s organising and colonialism. Prior to returning to academia, Rebecca spent nearly a decade working in gender, security and foreign policy. During her History For Pixels livestream session When History Does Not Repeat Itself: Lessons From The Past About Ending Violence Against Women, she said: “It’s complicated […] I think requiring both an organised and creative movement against violence but also a particular social and economic moment that the movement can take advantage of […] and I think that the lessons to draw from these is that you do actually need these combinations of a movement and a moment. There’s often really ambitious and passionate activists who are only able to make very incremental changes in the face of a really challenging context […] So the lesson is you have to do both and you have to play the long game.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #5: Inspirational Interview – Elena Gallina, Documentary Photographer and Economic Researcher – United States of America
Elena Gallina is a documentary photographer and economic researcher focused on feminist development. Having grown up in Kosovo in the aftermath of the ‘99 war and worked in refugee camps in Jordan and Palestine for several years, her work is inspired by lived experience and early childhood exposure. She studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, earning an MSc in Economic and Social History and an MBA in Social Impact, where her focus was on how sports and physical movement impact womxn’s liberation and recovery from sexual violence. Her advice to anyone and everyone who wishes to help stop VAW but has no idea where to begin: “I think if you’re reading this, look up for a second, pause, ask who is near, what’s around, and how you can invest, financially or time wise, in something right around the corner. Perhaps that’s someone directly in your circle in an abusive relationship whom you need to support, maybe that’s your city’s street campaign, maybe that’s starting your own advocacy or creative project to shed light on VAW. Maybe it’s just having good conversations with guys at work or in the gym, telling them about the impact of VAW. Whatever it is, think for a minute on what’s within reach and what you can do. Then go out and do it.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #6: Inspirational Interview – Eliza Hatch, Founder, Cheer Up Luv –United Kingdom
Eliza Hatch is a photographer, speaker, curator, digital creator, and the founder of Cheer Up Luv. Eliza founded Cheer Up Luv 8 years ago as a photo series retelling women’s and gender-diverse people’s experiences of public sexual harassment. Cheer Up Luv has evolved into a globally renowned educational platform and community combining art with journalism, activism, social media and a podcast that facilitates discussions around feminism, misogyny and everyday sexism. Eliza has worked with the United Nations and has been featured on the BBC and Channel 5 News discussing women’s safety and sexual harassment. When asked what needs to be done in order to end VAW, she said: “We can only tackle the problem of male violence against women once we have everyone on board. Too often, women in society have been burdened with solving the issue of gender-based violence alone, and we know that we need all parties and allies involved if we are going to make a change. We need continued education, awareness, and advocacy around the harms of misogyny and impact of gendered violence if we are ever going to solve it.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #7: Inspirational Interview – ElsaMarie D’Silva, Founder, Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) – India and Worldwide
ElsaMarie D’Silva is the Founder of Red Dot Foundation (India) and President of Red Dot Foundation Global (USA). She created Safecity, a technology platform crowdsourcing personal experiences of sexual violence globally, which is now the largest crowd map on this issue in India. ElsaMarie co-founded the Brave Movement to end childhood sexual abuse and Beyond Black, a social enterprise leveraging art for good. She has been recognised by the UN, German Federal Foreign Office, and the Government of India for her work. When talking about the importance of engaging men and boys in anti-VAW work in conservative countries like India, she said: “The most effective strategies include bringing them into the conversation, creating safe spaces for dialogue and debate, and providing education on gender equality, consent, and bystander intervention. At Red Dot Foundation, 60% of our volunteers are young men, actively involved in our programmes. Our studies show that men who participate in gender sensitisation training are significantly less likely to commit acts of VAW. By exposing them to real stories, data, and survivor experiences, we challenge harmful gender norms and encourage allyship.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #8: Read For Pixels Interview – Emma Lee, Poet, UNDER HER EYE – United Kingdom
UK poet and editor Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea (Five Leaves, 2015) and writes reviews for magazines and blogs. When asked what poets can do to help stop VAW, she said: “Poets can bear witness, destroy the myths around violence against women and girls, and help victims find the words to explain what they are going through so they can recognise the abuse and find ways to get out. It’s difficult for victims to articulate what they are going through; there’s a tendency to downplay or excuse their abuser’s behaviour and shame can leave victims feeling trapped. By enabling the sharing of stories, other victims may see that what’s happening to them is not their fault and they have agency and options. By helping destroy the myths, such as ‘she was asking for it’, ‘what did she do to provoke him?’, ‘why didn’t she get out?’, and demonstrate that such attitudes are victim-blaming, it helps victims overcome shame and despair.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #9: Read For Pixels Interview – Geneve Flynn, Poet and Editor, UNDER HER EYE – Australia
Geneve Flynn is a speculative fiction editor, author and poet. She is co-editor of Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, the anthology which launched the grassroots movement in Asian women’s horror writing. Geneve is also a two-time Bram Stoker Award winner, Shirley Jackson and Aurealis Award winner, and 2022 Queensland Writers Fellowship recipient. When asked why people should support stopping VAW, she said: “Everyone should support stopping violence against women because it is an issue which affects everyone. It kills women and girls; it devastates children; it destroys homes; it brutalises men and boys; it breaks our society. The conditions which create an environment where women and girls are abused are conditions which damage everyone”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #10: Inspirational Interview – Kathryn Caraway, Author and Stalking Survivor – United States of America
After years of living life as the target of a stalker, the fear of her perpetrator finding her again haunts every decision Kathryn Caraway makes. She sold her home, moved to a new state, and chose to go into hiding — a necessary separation between her past and present self. Kathryn Caraway is the pseudonym she selected when she chose to speak out about stalking. In 2022, she founded The Unfollow Me Project to raise awareness of the crime of stalking. She has a BA in journalism and an MBA. When asked about her thoughts regarding what countries can do better to address the crime of stalking, she said: “Too often our judicial systems look at charges in a silo. Since stalking is generally defined as a pattern of behaviour, it is essential to take a holistic approach. In my case, I had four individual charges that were not consolidated despite my efforts to advocate for such. Each charge on their own might not have warranted a greater penalty, but the context of all charges combined might have resulted in a different outcome.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #11: Inspirational Interview – Kennedy Odede, Founder and CEO, Shining Hope For Communities (SHOFCO) – Kenya
Kennedy Odede is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Shining Hope For Communities (SHOFCO), Kenya’s largest community-based organisation, and one of Africa’s most esteemed social entrepreneurs. He is best known for his award-winning work to transform the lives of slum residents and direct resources and decision-making power to local community organisations. Kennedy was named in the TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people in 2024, as Schwab Foundation’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year. When asked how we can end VAW, he said: “My work has shown me that education is key – both supporting and empowering women and girls with access to high quality education and the resources to stay in school, and educating communities to combat the traditional cultural mindsets that discriminate based on gender. It is also essential to elevate more women into positions of power, placing the decision-making in their hands.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #12: Read For Pixels Interview – Lynne Sargent, Poet, UNDER HER EYE – United States of America
Lynne Sargent is a queer writer and aerialist who holds a Ph.D in Applied Philosophy. Their work has been nominated for Rhysling, Elgin and Aurora Awards. Watch out for their non-fiction book Not Just Playing Make Believe, forthcoming from ECW Press. When asked why stopping VAW is important to them, they said: “Ending violence against women is important to me because violence is so often gendered and so-called ‘feminine’ attributes which resist violence and cultivate care are so widely degraded and devalued in our culture — and devalued through their association with femininity. I wanted to support The Pixel Project because the organisation took such a wide lens on what violence is, and also how women and their networks are affected by that violence. I think there’s been a cultural shift that tries to downplay just how lopsided violence as a gendered thing is — and that those of marginalised genders are the most at risk and least likely to perpetrate violence. I appreciated The Pixel Project continuing to draw awareness to that fact.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #13: Inspirational Interview – Mags Lesiak, Criminologist and Cambridge Fellow at the UK Government Office for Science and Technology – United Kingdom
Mags Lesiak is a psychological criminologist and Cambridge doctoral researcher working at the intersection of critical sociology, victimology, and machine learning. Her research examines how legal, clinical, and algorithmic systems interpret violence through the intertwined frameworks of risk, care and, control. She introduced the concept of weaponised attachment to describe how love can be used as a tool of control. Her work has been published in Violence Against Women, Teen Vogue, Psychology Today, ABC, Policing Insight and the American Bar Association, and has informed UK government policy and international media coverage. When asked how we can end VAW for good, she said: “Legal reforms and policies are essential, but they alone aren’t enough; we need a cultural transformation that challenges the norms, beliefs and power structures that normalise coercion, gendered oppression and control. Education from a young age, community engagement, survivor-centred practice, and institutional accountability are all critical. Technology, media and research can support this by exposing patterns of abuse and reshaping narratives. Ultimately, it’s a collective effort: change happens when individuals, communities, and systems all work together to reject violence as acceptable in any form.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #14: Read For Pixels Interview – Michelle Dotter, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Dzanc Books – United States of America
Michelle is the publisher and editor-in-chief of award-winning nonprofit press Dzanc Books. She has worked with New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award honorees, Shirley Jackson and Lambda Literary Award winners, and some damn fine other people, too. When asked why people should support efforts to end VAW, she said: “Women are people. Girls are children. People, children — none of us deserve to face violence, or be told that violence against us is expected or acceptable. If you’ve ever read some horrific news story about what was done to women and girls and been absolutely boiling over with rage, as I have, the only thing you can really do with those feelings is shut them off or use them to push for better. So, I hope we’ll all choose the latter path.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #15: Inspirational Interview – Professor Chesko, The Speech Prof – United States of America
Professor Chesko, known as “The Speech Prof” to over 2.5 million followers on social media, is a tenured professor of communication studies, online “Educator of the Year” award winner, national champion speech coach, host of the “Mr. Pick Me & The Manhater” podcast, loving husband and father of three young children. With his research background in the areas of intersectional feminist rhetoric, Chesko uses his online platforms to battle the toxicity of the internet with kindness and comedy. When discussing the most effective ways of getting men to start supporting efforts to end VAW, he said: “The reality is that most men will only change their behaviour when other men hold them accountable, because women have been saying these things for as long as I’ve been alive and they clearly aren’t listening. We need to normalise the idea that real men uplift others and, honestly, if you’re worried about losing friends by speaking up against harassment, maybe you need better friends. The ‘silent majority’ stays silent because they think someone else will handle it, but we all have to be that someone else.”
Pixel Project Interview Selection #16: Inspirational Interview – Suvekchya Rana, Executive Director, Saathi – Nepal
Suvekchya Rana is the Executive Director of Saathi, a leading nonprofit organisation in Nepal dedicated to addressing gender-based violence and empowering women. She began as a supervisor at one of Saathi’s shelter homes for children who have experienced violence. This experience was transformative, shaping her behaviour, thoughts, and understanding of the harsh realities faced by survivors of violence. When discussing how men and boys can support the fight to end VAW, she said: “By embodying feminist leadership principles, men and boys can become strong allies in the fight against violence, helping to dismantle patriarchal structures and support survivors. When men and boys advocate for gender equality, they contribute to creating a safer and more equitable society where women and girls can thrive. Their involvement is essential not only for challenging discriminatory practices but also for fostering long-term societal change that benefits everyone.”
Photo Credits:
- Alia Whitney-Johnson – Courtesy of Emerge Lanka
- Binita Shrestha – Courtesy of Prevention Collaborative
- Donna Bartos – Courtesy of BLOOM365
- Dr Megha Kumar – Courtesy of Dr Megha Kumar
- Dr Rebecca Turkington – Courtesy of Dr Rebecca Turkington
- Elena Gallina – Courtesy of Elena Gallina
- Eliza Hatch – Courtesy of Cheer Up Luv
- ElsaMarie D’Silva – Courtesy of ElsaMarie D’Silva
- Emma Lee – Courtesy of Emma Lee
- Geneve Flynn – Courtesy of Geneve Flynn
- Kathryn Caraway – Courtesy of Kathryn Caraway
- Kennedy Odede – Courtesy of Kennedy Odede
- Lynne Sargent – Courtesy of Lynne Sargent
- Michelle Dotter – Courtesy of Michelle Dotter
- Professor Chesko – Courtesy of Professor Chesko
- Suvekchya Rana – Courtesy of Saathi