Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Keynote Speaker

Courage Under Fire winner, Magnitsky Awards (2021)
Inspiration Award, Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year (2022)
Co-author of A Yard of Sky (Penguin, 2023)

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's Biography

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a British-Iranian writer, activist and compelling keynote speaker who examines how ordinary lives are reshaped by geopolitics. Drawing on her experience of arbitrary detention in Iran (2016–2022), she offers clear-eyed insight into state hostage-taking, the human cost of diplomatic stalemate, and what resilience looks like when freedom is reduced to a “yard of sky”.

Arrested at Tehran airport in April 2016 as she prepared to return to the UK with her young daughter, Nazanin spent years in Evin prison and under restriction, while a global campaign pressed for her release. She returned home in March 2022 and now speaks with rare authority about rights, responsibility and the power of public care in the face of injustice. She is also an Ambassador for the prison reading charity Give a Book, advocating for access to books as a lifeline of dignity and hope.

Nazanin and her husband Richard Ratcliffe told their story in A Yard of Sky (Penguin, 12 October 2023), a memoir of love, resistance and survival. Her courage has been recognised internationally, including the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards’ Courage Under Fire (2021) and Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Inspiration Award (2022). In 2023, she addressed the Booker Prize ceremony on how books sustained her through solitary confinement, and on 5 December 2024 she delivered the Orwell Memorial Lecture at the Southbank Centre in London.

In 2025, Nazanin became a Project Ambassador for the Imperial War Museum and Liberty collaboration “Creativity in Conflict & Confinement”, helping shape fabric designs inspired by captivity and community, with the exhibition running until February 2026. Her story also reached wider audiences through the BBC drama Prisoner 951 (2025). In every engagement, she brings hard-won perspective and practical hope—helping audiences think differently about freedom, courage, and the choices leaders make under pressure.

Human rights and injustice

Resilience, courage and survival under extreme pressure

The psychological impact of imprisonment and isolation

Women, freedom and authoritarian regimes

Motherhood and family separation

Media, diplomacy and global accountability

She brings first-hand authority on arbitrary detention in Iran (2016–2022), helping leaders understand the human and reputational stakes of hostage diplomacy.
She translates survival under prolonged isolation into clear lessons on resilience, courage and decision-making under extreme pressure.
She speaks with credibility on human rights, women’s freedom and authoritarian regimes, equipping organisations to navigate values, risk and global accountability.
She draws on her memoir A Yard of Sky (Penguin, 2023) to connect policy and power to lived reality, creating impact that stays with audiences long after the event.
She is an experienced keynote speaker, delivering compelling mainstage talks and fireside conversations that give audiences language for discussing injustice, separation and hope.