Ukraine, Chechnya and the Fight for Freedom

Anna Gunin is a translator from Russian. Among her translations are Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer (co-translated with Arch Tait), Mikail Eldin’s war memoir The Sky Wept Fire (winner of an English PEN award) and Pavel Bazhov’s folk tales in Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (shortlisted for the 2014 Rossica Prize).

Daria Mattingly is a lecturer in European History at the University of Chichester and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where she received her doctorate and is an affiliated lecturer. Dr Mattingly’s teaching covers Soviet History, Russian and Chinese contemporary history. Daria frequently contributes to international media, including CNN, L’Express, Ukraina Moderna, and Ukrainska Pravda. She is the author of four book chapters and several articles, one of which received the ASN doctoral paper prize in 2015. Daria is finishing her book, titled Stalin’s Activists, on rank-and-file perpetrators of the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor.

Javaad Alipoor is a British-Iranian writer, director, and performer who founded The Javaad Alipoor Company in 2019. His latest work, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, received five-star reviews and sold-out audiences at Battersea Arts Centre and HOME, Manchester, before touring internationally.

Alipoor’s previous work includes writing, co-directing, and performing in The Believers Are But Brothers. He also co-created Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran, which won a Fringe First Award and later transformed into a digital experience during the COVID-19 lockdown, touring to Sundance Film Festival and The Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival.

Alipoor has held directing positions at Sheffield Theatres and Bradford’s Theatre in the Mill. Additionally, he is an activist and political writer, co-founding several organizations and contributing to major publications.