Defiant: Profiles of Resistance
About this audiobook
Eleven stories of people across Europe who became unlikely Human Rights Defenders.
Across Europe, rising repression is reshaping daily life. Local people helping others are targeted and criminalized for exposing corruption, helping refugees and acting out of kindness.
In today’s climate of increasing fear and intimidation, some refuse to look away.
Award-winning activist Brian Dooley presents eleven true stories of people who chose courage over safety: a former violinist in Ukraine driving an ambulance at the eastern front of the war on Ukraine; a family in eastern Poland secretly sheltering migrants hunted in the border forest; and a Turkish scientist risking prison to expose toxic contamination threatening children’s health. In the Czech Republic, a woman transforming how sexual violence is understood and prosecuted, while volunteers in Italy treat and assist refugees arriving along the Balkan route. Communities in Bosnia and Northern Ireland resist environmentally destructive mining projects. Polish activists expose homophobia, and anonymous Baltic volunteers counter Russian propaganda, while in England, a lawyer spends decades challenging wrongful terrorism convictions.
None of these people set out to become activists. They were musicians, scientists, and neighbors who saw injustice and acted to stop it.
Drawing on decades of frontline reporting, Dooley details how imagination, persistence, and moral clarity can defy repression and change people’s lives.
Defiant reminds us that the defense of human rights begins not with institutions, but with what ordinary people can achieve when they choose to stand up for one another.
About the author
Brian Dooley is a longtime human rights activist specializing in supporting Human Rights Defenders working amid revolutions, armed conflict, and severe repression. He is an Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast, a Visiting Scholar at University College London, and a Senior Advisor at Human Rights First. From 2020 to 2023, Dooley served as Senior Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. In 2025, he received the University of Oslo Human Rights Award. He is the author of several books on civil rights and the Northern Ireland conflict.
Morgan C. Jones is an actor, writer and audio producer based in Dublin, Ireland. Included among his numerous stage and screen credits are a six week run of The United States Versus Ulysses at The Irish Arts Center NYC in 2025, The Quiet Men (ongoing) a one man play he wrote and performs about his great uncles the actors Barry Fitzgerald and Arthur Shields, and notably his performance as Detective Roberts in DETAINMENT which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2019. He is a prolific voice actor and sole narrator of Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin Trilogy series.
