Book Launch: Madam War Criminal by Olivera Simić

The War Crimes Research Group invites you to a book launch with Olivera Simić to discuss her new book, Madam War Criminal.
In 2001, Biljana Plavšić made history: she became the only female political leader ever prosecuted for mass atrocities. She was the one woman among 161 indictees at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia—and the first since Nuremberg to be convicted by an international court.
Charged with genocide and crimes against humanity, Plavšić took a plea bargain. Just one other Bosnian Serb politician at her level was sentenced: Radovan Karadžić himself, President to Plavšić’s Vice-President in the autonomous Republika Srpska. Yet before the conflict, Plavšić had been a globally renowned scientist at the University of Sarajevo, penning journal articles and serving as faculty dean.
This gripping book revolves around hundreds of hours of interviews with a stridently unrepentant war criminal—now in her 90s, and a free woman. How did this biology professor end up heading a vengeful ethno-nationalist movement that murdered tens of thousands?

Olivera Simić is a Professor with the Griffith Law School, a feminist and a human rights activist. Dr Simić was born in the former Yugoslavia and lived through the Yugoslav Wars (1991-1999). She was nineteen years old, studying the first year of a law degree in Bosnia andHerzegovina when the Bosnian War broke out in 1992. Initially as a refugee and later as a migrant, Dr Simić lived and studied in Europe, the USA and South America, before coming to Australia in 2006. In 2014, Dr Simić published a memoir based on her experiences with war in Bosnia titled Surviving Peace: A Political Memoir (Spinifex).

She has published five monographs and eight co-edited collections, as well as numerous book chapters, journal articles, and personal narratives. Her writing has appeared in online media such as The Conversation, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, Griffith Review and Lawyers Weekly. Her non-fiction work draws on hundreds of interviews with victims, perpetrators and bystanders of the wars. The stories of people who struggle with post-war trauma and seek some form of justice for crimes they survived, particularly women, are at the heart of Dr Simić’s work. Her book, Lola's War: Rape Without Punishment, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2023. Her book Madam War Criminal: Biljana Plavsic, Serbia's Iron Lady was published by Hurst in October 2025.

Dr Simić was a nominee for the Penny Pether Prize for Scholarship in Law, Literature and the Humanities, and won the Peace Women Award from Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF, Australian branch). Lola's War has been shortlisted for the Australian Legal Research Book Award 2024.

Professor James Gow

James Gow presently teaches on the Global Strategy Programme at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London. He is Professor of International Peace and Security and Co-Director of the War Crimes Research Group at King’s College London, as well as Non-Resident Fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute, Princeton University. Prior to joining King’s, he lectured at Hatfield Polytechnic (now the University of Hertfordshire) and has held visiting positions at the Wilson Center in Washington DC, Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of Sheffield. He has published over twenty books, several of which focus on the Yugoslav War, war and war crimes and questions of the arts and reconciliation. On this last topic, he has worked extensively on research projects over the last decade, working particularly closely with the History Museum of Bosnia and Hercegovina, Sarajevo, with the latest project funded by LISS-DTP (UKRI) on the role of the Museum in the strategic memorialisation of atrocities. He is presently working, inter alia, on genocide and the legacy of the ICTY, strategy and accountability for war crimes in Ukraine, and aspects of war and art and reconciliation.

Jasna Dragovic-Soso

Jasna Dragović-Soso is Emeritus Professor of International Politics and History at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has written extensively about memory politics, transitional justice, nationalism, state disintegration and international intervention, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia and the Western Balkans, and is currently writing a book about truth commission initiatives and memory politics in the post-conflict Balkans and co-editing the Brill Handbook on Regions of Memory: Southeastern Europe. She is the author of ‘Saviours of the Nation’: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism (Hurst and McGill Queen’s University Press, 2003) and co-editor of three other books. She has provided expertise on Yugoslavia and the Western Balkans to various non-academic stakeholders and British and international media outlets. Her work has appeared in French, Italian, German and Serbian. From 2022 to 2024, she was Director of the Centre for the Study of the Balkans and, from 2017 to 2020, Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is co-editor of the Palgrave book series on Memory Politics and Transitional Justice and a member of the editorial board of the journal History & Memory.

Professor Rachel Kerr

Rachel is Professor of War and Society in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She is a contemporary historian whose research focuses broadly on how states, societies and individuals contend with legacies of war and atrocity. Rachel’s current research is focused on the role of art and creative approaches to contending with ongoing and past violence, and how visual and embodied methodologies can be leveraged to address intersectional gendered violence in the context of war and genocide.

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