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 and Herzegovina, 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 moving to Australia in 2006. In 2014, Dr Simić published a memoir, Surviving Peace: A Political Memoir (Spinifex), based on her experiences of war in Bosnia.
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 nonfiction 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 Award 2024.
Olivera, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Your work in transitional justice is deeply shaped by leaving home in 1992, studying across several countries, and building a life across borders. How have these experiences shaped your understanding of responsibility, the limits of international law, and what you’re willing to say publicly about nationalism and belonging?
I think that living and studying across continents and countries, and building a life across borders, fundamentally alters one’s understanding of identity and belonging, especially when crossing borders is not necessarily something one chooses freely. I never wanted to leave my country. I had to. Forced migration fundamentally transformed my life and placed me and many others who had to flee in profoundly challenging circumstances. I was 19 when the war began, and until then, I had been living through what felt like the best period of my life, before the war abruptly destroyed the life I knew.
Living between languages, political systems, and historical narratives created in me a constant awareness that identities are neither fixed nor neutral. For those shaped by histories of war and displacement, such as myself, crossing borders is not only a geographical movement but also an intellectual and ethical confrontation with how societies remember violence, distribute responsibility, and define who belongs. Nationalist cultures, such as Bosnian’s, often encourage selective memory: one nation or ethnicity is positioned primarily as a victim, while the suffering of “the other” is minimised, denied, or justified. I am constantly confronted with these unjust and simplistic narratives, and have devoted my life to challenging them.
Living in different countries exposes the fragility of such narratives because historical events appear radically different depending on where one stands. Distance, both mental and physical, offers a different perspective on the same event. I have seen how the same war may be remembered as liberation in one place and as a catastrophe in another. Exposure to these conflicting memories and narratives creates a difficult but necessary responsibility to speak truth to power. Here, international law can serve as a useful tool in addressing forced displacement, human suffering, and mass atrocities, but it cannot provide a comprehensive answer to these phenomena.
This is why my work is interdisciplinary. I have never found a true home solely in international law and its doctrinal meanings. I am primarily interested in how international law trickles down to the ground and affects the lives of its recipients, such as survivors of mass atrocities, particularly women. More recently, I have also been interested in exploring how it affects the lives of perpetrators once they have served their sentences and re-enter their communities, as well as those who flee justice.
Building a life across borders also changes what one is willing to say publicly about nationalism and belonging. Distance can make criticism more possible. Leaving a national environment often weakens the pressures of conformity that make certain questions difficult or dangerous to ask. One can become more willing to speak openly about the violence embedded within nationalist projects, including the ways nationalism depends on exclusion, mythmaking, and selective empathy. Yet this willingness frequently comes at a cost, regardless of where someone lives.
Criticising nationalism may lead to accusations of betrayal, disloyalty, or insufficient patriotism, particularly in societies where collective identities remain deeply tied to unresolved histories of conflict, such as in Bosnia. I experienced such accusations myself. From my own experience, living in many places creates distance from inherited narratives while simultaneously intensifying an awareness of historical entanglements. I am at once an insider and an outsider, never fully belonging in either place, which has both its advantages and disadvantages. But that distance, whether mental, physical, or both, is crucial. I often say that I would never have become who I am had I not left and lived far from my place of birth. Distance has given me a sense of safety and, above all, the opportunity for critical reflection.
Your work bridges gender and international criminal justice. In your view, what does mainstream transitional justice still misunderstand about the nature of gendered violence, and what does it consistently fail to respond to?
Transitional justice has acknowledged gender-based violence as a central component of war, authoritarianism, and mass atrocity. International tribunals, truth commissions, reparations programs, and memorialisation initiatives now routinely reference sexual violence and the experiences of women in war. But gender-based violence is still often understood through an overly simplified binary framework that assumes women are victims and men are perpetrators, overlooking the complexity of violence, identity, power relations, and the experiences of those who do not fit neatly into these categories. And in this framework, not all women are victims; the victimhood status depends on their belonging to a particular group.
We still need to do better at applying intersectionality as an analytical framework in our work and at examining how it explains how overlapping social and political identities, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability, combine to create unique and compounding experiences of discrimination or privilege. In my work on sexual violence in war, I have examined how some women have been ignored in transitional justice and feminist research because of their identity, particularly because they are perceived as “belonging to” the aggressor side. For example, the experiences of Serb women who suffered sexual violence during the Bosnian War have often been sidelined, while in contemporary contexts, the experiences of Russian women remain almost entirely absent from the literature on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Similarly, the experiences of German women sexually assaulted by Allied forces were largely absent from public discussion for nearly fifty years after World War II. These women were burdened by being treated as ‘extensions’ of their husbands, brothers, or sons who were associated with the aggressor side. However, this is not something unique to the field of transitional justice. Other fields of scholarly inquiry suffer too from reducing some women to victims of wartime violence, and others not or overfocusing on the crime of sexual violence in war while neglecting other crimes women may suffer during the war. Women are still largely represented in the literature as either victims or peacebuilders, less so as war combatants, and even less as perpetrators of war crimes.
Your monograph, Lola’s War: Rape Without Punishment, follows a survivor whose rapist remains free, and even a conviction doesn’t translate into safety. After writing that, what do you now believe is the most dangerous myth we tell about justice—conviction, closure, deterrence, or reconciliation?
All of them, I guess. Each of these terms has multiple meanings. None of them is straightforward, as they are not fixed or universal concepts but can be understood and experienced differently depending on historical, political, cultural, and personal contexts. We can be cynical about each of them, but my work is to send the message that justice, deterrence, closure, or reconciliation does not begin or end with conviction. And many survivors will never see their perpetrator convicted, but in Lola’s case, she did. Yet her rapist still roams free. One has to constantly reimagine what justice looks like and what justice means to survivors of mass atrocities. There are no easy answers to that one.
Is it fair to say your work is often read as feminist, especially when you write about violence and impunity? What happens to this feminist narrative when the central figure is a woman who helped legitimise ethnic cleansing?
I think there is a hesitance among feminist scholars to research women perpetrators, and in studies of war, genocide, and political violence, women’s participation in violence has frequently been minimised, exceptionalised, or explained through manipulation by men, coercion, or emotional instability rather than agency. This reluctance also stems from concerns that focusing on women perpetrators might undermine recognition of the widespread victimisation of women, particularly in contexts of sexual and gender-based violence. So, we write extensively about women survivors, but far less about women’s capacity to commit crimes.
Historically, this reluctance has existed for understandable reasons. For a long time, women victims of mass atrocities were silenced and overlooked in research, and significant effort was required to bring their experiences into public and scholarly view. However, the hesitance to engage with women’s agency in committing crimes remains, and as a result, these experiences continue to be under-researched and shunned. Another reason for this may be a desire to avoid feeding into narratives such as “You see, women can be nasty too,” even though we know that women perpetrators remain a minority compared to men. So, I think there is a fear of reinforcing false equivalences that misogynists might exploit to claim that women are “just as evil” as men. At the same time, feminist scholarship has increasingly argued that excluding women perpetrators reproduces simplistic understandings of gender and violence. Women can simultaneously occupy multiple roles: victim, bystander, survivor, collaborator, or perpetrator, and these categories are not always mutually exclusive. Ignoring women’s capacity for violence can therefore obscure the complexity of conflict dynamics and limit more nuanced analyses of power, agency, and accountability.
You’ve authored or co-edited twelve books. What did writing Madam War Criminal make you do that your earlier work didn’t—both in how you gathered the truth, and in how you judged your own role in telling it?
This was the most difficult project for me. I challenged myself on so many levels. This kind of work is mind-boggling in terms of ethics; it makes you question your own values and principles. Talking to people convicted of mass atrocities is hard, not just because it is difficult personally for researchers to deal with their own prejudices, assumptions, fears, but also because of constantly worrying about how other people will perceive your work; whether you will be judged, accused of ‘siding’ or ‘sympathising’ with the perpetrator. And this inner and outer tension is complicated to manage. I wanted to bring some of these struggles into my book to show readers that I am aware of them and that I have no easy answers.
Your aunt introduced you to Plavšić and called her “wonderful.” Did that family connection lower your guard and, from the start, did you feel Plavšić was setting the terms of the relationship, not you?
I think we had some silent agreement about how this relationship would work. I was aware that she never wanted to be interviewed by academics before I came in on my aunt’s recommendation. Plavšić told me many times that she allowed me into her world because my late aunt was her great friend. The terms were straightforward, but of course, over time, the relationship takes on different directions, and you can end up questioning the limits and boundaries of it. I came as a scholar and researcher to ask questions, and she, as an interviewee, was there to answer them as much as she wanted to. I asked questions, sub-questions, and clarifications; she provided answers. I stick to the ethics we are trained to honour and to be analytical rather than moralistic in my thinking and judgment. Having said all of this, it was hard not to ‘be human’ and cross professional lines when you spend so much time with someone.
Plavsic pleaded guilty, and her expressions of remorse were widely taken at face value, as her admission was considered strategic rather than moral. Later, she said she “did nothing wrong”. How did this shape your aim in writing the book?
My aim, among other things, was to understand where she stands on remorse, if she has it at all. What I found was not that Plavšić lacks empathy or has no capacity for emotional connection; rather, these feelings appear to be reserved for Serbs, her own ethnic group. She did lots of humanitarian work for Serbian victims, refugees, displaced persons, and soldiers. The soldiers, in particular, admired her; they called her “Srpska carica” [Serb Empress] because she went to the trenches and personally delivered cigarettes, warm clothing, and other necessities that she had personally fundraised.
This led me to the realisation that perpetrators, unless they are pathological, can be capable of empathy and love, but that these capacities may be exclusively reserved for those with whom they identify. It is almost as if there is a form of compartmentalisation, or an ability to “switch off,” as my colleague Professor Alette Smeulers says. Such ability is allowing them, in the same day, to have breakfast with their families, see their children off to school, and then go on to commit mass murder, return home, have dinner with their families, read their children bedtime stories, tuck them into bed, and go to sleep. All of these can happen on the same day, so saying they are incapable of being empathetic is not quite accurate.
In your interviews, did you ever confront Plavšić with the human cost—names, places, the dead, the displaced—or did you avoid that to keep her talking? What did you trade away to get her to stay in the room?
I would say when you sit down to talk to someone convicted of war crimes or any crimes for that matter, as a researcher, you must be clear why you are there and what your role is. I occasionally presented her with facts that contradicted what she was saying, but she would quickly wave them away or counter them with facts about crimes committed against Serbs. Some things she would admit, but would quickly add, ‘but, you know what they did to us?’ or would switch to a different topic. I did not come into her unit to have a two-way dialogue in which we could discuss our views, debate, and engage in conversation on equal footing; I was there to hear what she had to say about her role in the war, how she perceived and why she made the decision she made during that time.
I was there to interview her, which meant I asked questions, she replied, and I occasionally commented or asked follow-up questions. This is how interviewing in most research settings works, similarly to what we are doing right now, right? So, there are some things to be accepted in this work: as a researcher who interviews perpetrators, you are not there to convince them of facts and evidence, but to hear their worldview and make something of it. You are not going there to judge someone but to try to understand their point. But this is hard, of course. You may feel like you are complicit in these views, that you agree with them, since you do not openly voice your disagreement. And I know that some of us doing this work are troubled by these feelings. So, the researcher will more often than not find herself in an ethical quandary, but that does not diminish the significance and necessity of such empirical work, which is still rare when it comes to perpetrators of mass atrocities.
She rejects “genocide” for Srebrenica and reframes it as merely a “crime.” When a perpetrator controls the vocabulary, they control the moral reality. How did you stop her from turning your conversations into a platform for revisionism?
I did not stop her or try to change her views. I did not believe I was the one who could change the views of someone of her ranking and at her age. It was not my aim to do so either. When I met Plavsic for the first time, she was 87. The views she held onto during the war had not changed at all. Indeed, very little has changed in her worldviews. She thought she was tricked and set up by ‘the West’, as most of the Serb defendants think. They think there was a conspiracy to convict “only Serbs” for the war crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. I did not sit down to talk to Plavsic for many hours and years with the aim of changing her views, but rather to try to understand where they come from. And I brought some of my understandings in my book.
Plavšić is still admired by many Serbs and receives fan letters. What does that admiration reveal about nationalism today, about the need for heroes, and the willingness to erase victims to keep them?
It tells a lot about the legacy of the war and justice in the Balkans, and the danger the region faces. Celebration of war crimes, their denial, and erasure of the ‘other’ victims has become mainstream in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia. The need for heroes is coupled with the necessity of pretending that all war crimes were not in fact crimes but acts of ‘liberation’. This is the reason why the ruling political elites do not talk simply about war but about ‘liberation war’, or about ‘homeland war’ or about ‘aggression’, implying that the side which was attacked by the aggressor is innocent and their armies committed no war crimes. The war in Bosnia changed its form, but there is still a sort of war, this time fought with narratives, language, symbols, and memorabilia.
You’ve said you’ll be accused of sympathising no matter how you wrote this. So where exactly is your line: what would count, in your view, as crossing from understanding into normalising?
The concern about how this work would be read has been on my mind. And I think readers will feel that concern as they go through the manuscript. Yes, this is a big issue, and I don’t have the answer. One concern of people who study perpetrators is that they may be perceived as sympathizing with them. And this is a risk one takes, since it is very hard to spend so much time with Plavsic and explore her life in detail without humanising her. And humanising someone convicted of crimes against humanity sits uncomfortably with many. I struggled with it, so I understand that readers may struggle with it too. I was trying to stick to ethics and analytical thinking, and not normalising the terrible things that had been done, but whether I succeeded is up to the reader’s judgment.
Many survivors will ask: “Why should her story get more space than ours?” What do you say to someone who believes your book repeats the original violence by re-centring the perpetrator?
I understand why people may be upset by giving perpetrators a space to share their perspectives, and I often receive this question. And many of my colleagues receive it too. All of us, in fact. But I am a researcher, and I am curious and trained to understand what lies behind someone’s behaviour in terrible times of mass atrocities. If we do not talk to people who have been convicted of such crimes, how will we ever understand their motivations and therefore prevent such crimes in the future?
How do you expect this book to be received in Serbian nationalist circles, and what personal consequences did you accept as the price of publishing it?
I write in my book that when one does the work I do and in the context I come from, it is almost inevitable that one is at risk of being accused of being either a ‘traitor’ or a ‘nationalist’. I assume the Serb nationalists won’t like the book since they are in denial of war crimes committed by Serbs, so narratives that go against this denial are not welcome. Some also expected perhaps that I painted Plavsic as a martyr. I was aware that the book may be perceived as ‘traitorous’ by Serbs, but my whole work has been politically sensitive to the ruling elites in the Balkans.
I write about war crimes committed by all ethnic groups in the Balkans, but what hurts most is when one writes about the crimes of their ‘own’ ethnic group. But the risk of being criticised does not come only from Serbs but also from Bosniaks. In fact, I was recently criticised by a prominent Bosniak figure who said that I should have never sat with Plavsic and “drink tea and eat cookies”, but rather tell her about the mass graves and killings that she, with her actions, incited. I disagree. I believe it is important to do this kind of work and talk to convicted war criminals, and, yes, if necessary, have a tea with them. So, yes, work on war crimes in particular when one is an insider in a complex political environment, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, comes at a price, often in the form of a lack of sleep, trolling on social media, and concern, but it is serious work and has to be done. And I am, of course, not the only one doing it. Luckily, there are many people who do take risks and write about the truth, which does not sit comfortably with the elites in power.
After years in her narrative world, what is the most dangerous justification Plavsic clings to, and what is the most dangerous interpretation her supporters hold onto?
I think the most dangerous worldview that she holds is that she has done nothing wrong. Plavsic and many other convicted war criminals do not see themselves as perpetrators but as people who wanted to ‘protect’ their people. This is the reasoning they cling to. One of them is to protect their state of mind. Those who looked themselves in the mirror and took responsibility for their crimes have been psychologically crushed. So, denial serves as a protective mechanism that people hold onto, allowing them to make sense of their actions by telling themselves a story that they had to do what they did in order to protect themselves and their people. They are also expected to deny their crimes if they are to be reintegrated into their communities. Their followers, meanwhile, see them as ‘heroes’. I think this is the most dangerous point: when someone convicted of war crimes is convinced that they have done nothing wrong; on the contrary, that what they did was necessary, and that they would do it again. And equally devastating is the fact that their supporters regard these individuals as nothing less than ‘martyrs’. Unfortunately, it is precisely these kinds of worldviews that have been unfolding in the Balkans.
If you could ask Plavšić one question that you believe she cannot answer honestly—one that would expose the core of her worldview—what would it be?
I asked Plavsic many questions in our seven-year conversations, but one that haunted me and kept coming to me, and the one I was hoping the answer would change by the end of our interviews, was whether she repented. Her answer, which did not change during all the long years we conversed, was ‘no’, and that she ‘would do the same again’. However, one cannot be one hundred per cent sure this was an honest answer, not under the pressure to go down in history as unrepentant. She felt strong backlash after she publicly expressed her remorse. Plavsic lost support from many Serbs who deemed her a ‘traitor’ for admitting that Serbs committed war crimes. I do not think she ever recovered her image among her supporters after that. I think one of the reasons she was eager to speak to me was to make clear that she is unrepentant and that this is how she wants to be remembered. And this says a great deal about the legacy of war crimes and prosecutions in the Balkans.
Where can our readers find out more about you and your publication?
They can read about some of my work on the following online accounts:
- www.oliverasimic.com
- https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/madam-war-criminal/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverasimicauthor/
- https://www.instagram.com/oliverasimicauthor/
- https://x.com/Olivera_Author
- https://www.amazon.com.au/Madam-War-Criminal-Biljana-Serbias/dp/1805262866
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