Drawing on personal memory and embodied experience, the book shifts the focus from grand historical events to everyday life, revealing how war is experienced, understood, and remembered through the eyes of a child. The narrative traces the author's evolving worldview, from the simplified certainties of childhood to a more nuanced understanding of war, social class, privilege, and power relations. The book also explores the post-war period, during which the author's experience as an interpreter for American NATO troops prompts reflections on international intervention, expectations of liberation, and the challenges of rebuilding Kosovo. Through a deeply personal story, Girlhood at War raises broader questions about memory, justice, identity, and the ways in which war continues to shape individual lives.

“The war is bad for all of us,” I reply in utter confusion. The noises of the military sound like a concrete monster weighing a thousand kilograms walking around us. Maybe the military is just one street away from us now. “Oh, you think the war affects us all the same, do you?” he asks with a piercing look. “Do you see this wood in my arm? When I light that fire now, the wood won’t all burn the same. Same fire, they will all turn to ash, but they will not all burn the same,” he adds, his eyes staring deep into mine as if to pluck all logic out from inside me."

Photography: Majlinda Hoxha

Vjosa Musliu is Associate Professor of International Relations at Free University of Brussels, Belgium. Her research focuses on international and European interventions and statebuilding. Her area of focus is primarily the Balkans and post-Soviet space. She is a member of the Yugoslawomen+ Collective, a collective of six academics from the post-Yugoslav space working in ‘Global North’ academia. She is the author of three books and dozens of journal articles in the  field of international relations.

Lura Limani is a writer and independent researcher from Kosovo. Her essays and journalistic work have been published in multiple European and regional publications and she is the author of Trans në Kosovë [Being Trans in Kosovo] (2023), the co-author of BOOM (2020) and co-editor of Home (2023). She is the co-founder of the Kosovo Oral History Initiative and the Lirindja Foundation, and serves on the Executive Board of the Lumbardhi Foundation. Lura currently leads a regional team at the Open Society Foundations – Western Balkans and heads the national office in Kosovo.

Doruntina Vinca is a writer, researcher, and translator from Prishtina, based in Tirana. Her practice moves between language, feminist literature, and the text as a tool for exploring new forms of collectivity and knowledge-sharing. She is the co-founder of the reading group Radical Sense and the editor of two volumes of feminist texts translated and published in Albanian.

The event was co-organised by Open Society Foundations - Western Balkans, and the University of Prishtina.