Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies

25/09/2026

📣 Workshop Announcement: Interieurs des Exils
📅 14–15 October 2026
📍 of Innsbruck
💻 In person + online

What do we take with us when we go into exile? Tables, shelves, chests of drawers, crockery and other everyday objects may seem far removed from the political upheavals that produce exile. Yet for many twentieth-century German-Jewish emigrants, these things travelled with them and carried traces of former homes while becoming part of new ones.

The workshop “Interieurs des Exils” at the University of Innsbruck will explore the material and literary worlds of exile through objects, interiors and the spaces they create. It asks how things become vessels of memory, how language and material objects become intertwined in exile, and what exile literature can reveal about changing experiences of home and belonging.

The workshop is organised by Professor Thomas Wegmann (University of Innsbruck) and Dr Till Greite (ILCS, London) as part of this year’s SAS–UIBK collaboration.

Find the programme and registration details here:

Twentieth-century German-Jewish emigrants took belongings with them into exile – tables, shelves, chests of drawers, crockery, and other everyday objects. Under difficult and unfamiliar circumstances, they were forced to make a new home with the remnants of their former lives. From a literary and ...

21/09/2026

👋 That's a wrap on our triennial conference with this year's theme "Refugee Academics and their Networks".

It was a really stimulating few days of papers, conversations and questions about the networks through which refugee academics navigated exile and about the ways in which they went on to shape academic, cultural and intellectual life in their places of refuge. Many papers went beyond the narrativ of successful integration and instead drew attention to interrupted careers, precarious work and gendered experiences. A more detailed report will be follow.

🙏 A huge thank you to all our speakers and chairs for bringing such a wide range of perspectives to the conference, and to everyone who came along and contributed to the discussions. And especially thank you to our wonderful organisers Anthony Grenville, Felicitas Starr-Egger and Andrea Hammel for all the work that went into putting the programme together.

👏 Many thanks too to our partners the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung e.V. and everyone at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies who helped make the conference happen.

🎶 We also want to thank the austrian cultural forum london and our other supporters who have made the Thursday evening chamber music concert such a success.

It was lovely to see so many familiar faces from the exile studies community and to meet many new ones.

22/06/2026

📖 New Blog Post: Rethinking the ‘Self’ Across Borders

In this reflection, Monja Stahlberger looks back on the conference Crossing Borders: Transnational Perspectives on Life Writing and Ego-Documents which she co-organised with Bithell visiting fellow Charlie Knight and committee member Rachel Pistol.

Monja reflects on how transnational approaches can reshape our understanding of life writing, ego-documents, and the construction of the self across borders.

Read the blog post here:

Monja Stahlberger reflects on the conference ‘Crossing Borders: Transnational Perspectives on Life Writing and Ego-Documents’.

10/06/2026

🎙️ New Podcast Available

The recording of our recent talk, “(Hi)stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora: Reflections on a Hybrid Publication Initiative”, presented by Miriam Rürup and Lisa Sophie Gebhard is now available.

What happens when people are forced to leave their homes but carry their languages, cultures, and memories with them? The international publication initiative (Hi)stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora explores the experiences of Jews who emigrated from German-speaking Europe, particularly after 1933, and examines the complex dynamics of diaspora, identity, belonging, and new beginnings across the globe.

Miriam Rürup and Lisa Sophie Gebhard discuss the origins of the project, its aims and collaborative structure, the challenges it faces, and its relevance for contemporary scholarship on migration, exile, and diaspora.

🎧 Listen to the podcast here:

Miriam Rürup and Lisa Sophie Gebhard introduce the collborative publication initiative '(Hi)stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora'.

10/03/2026

Join us at 'Thinking Authoritarianism: The Prague-Vienna Circle in British Exile' on 6 May 2026. Speakers at the workshop will include Jeremy Adler, Peter Filkins, Maria Peacock and Erhard Schüttpelz. Programme and further details at:
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/thinking-authoritarianism-prague-vienna-circle-british-exile
Advance registration essential!

This workshop focuses on the ‘Prague-Vienna Circle’, a group of Jewish friends from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire who, having survived the Holocaust and reunited in British exile after 1945, sought to make sense of the momentous events they had witnessed. The circle comprised Nobel laureate...

26/02/2026

Another of our Exile Archive collections has just been catalogued: the Siegfried and Lotte Moos Papers.

Siegfried and Lotte Moos were remarkable German anti-N**i refugees who rebuilt their lives in Britain after fleeing Berlin in 1933. Their archive tells a story of political resistance, creativity, and survival.

We’re excited to share that this fascinating collection is now available to explore.

Find out more here:

The papers give an insight into the lives of two, nominally Jewish, refugees from the N***s who had to flee Germany in 1933 because of their political beliefs and activities.

25/02/2026

(Hi)stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora: Reflections on a Hybrid Publication Initiative

📅 15 April 2026, 6:00–7:30pm
📍 Room 261, Senate House, University of London — with live Zoom stream

Register now for our upcoming seminar by Professor Miriam Rürup and Dr Lisa Sophie Gebhard of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies.

They join us in London to explore the innovative publication initiative (Hi)stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora, a collaborative project examining the experiences of Jews who left German-speaking Europe, particularly after 1933, and forged new identities and connections around the world. Rather than framing diaspora as a story of longing for return, the project highlights fluidity, adaptation, and the ongoing reshaping of memory, culture, and belonging.

Rürup and Gebhard will discuss the project’s foundations, aims, and challenges, as well as its relevance for understanding migration, displacement, and identity formation today.

The event is free and open to all, with both in-person and online attendance options. Advance registration is essential.

👉

Speakers:  Miriam Rürup (Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam/Oxford) and Lisa Sophie Gebhard (Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam) What happens when people are forced to leave their homes – but take their languages, cultures, and memories along...

18/02/2026

In her latest post Miller Archivist Kat Hubschmann tells the story of LGBT+ writer Annette Eick through the photographs in the Senate House Archive.

Kat Hubschmann writes about Annette Eick and her collection of papers, dating from the late 1920s when she was writing for le***an magazines in Berlin, to poems and journals up until her death in Devon in 2010.

13/02/2026

Registration is now open for Corinne Painter's seminar on 25 March 2026 in which she will examine life-long female political activists understood the N**i threat in the 1920s and 1930s and why they continued their fight for social justice. The seminar will be given in person at the University of London Senate House and online via Zoom.

This seminar examines the experiences and motivations of life-long female political activists to identify how they understood the N**i threat in the 1920s and 1930s and why they continued their fight for social justice. It focuses on women who, by 1933, had vast experience in political organising, m...

13/02/2026

Registration is now open for the seminar on 4 March (in person at the University of London Senate House and online via Zoom). Gisela Holfter (Limerick) and Noel Russell (Belfast) focus on the emigrés who were admitted to the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, and those who were refused entry.

Gisela Holfter (Limerick) and Noel Russell (Belfast) explore what happened to the refugees from Germany and Austria who applied to come to the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland from 1933 onwards, but were refused entry; the stories of the successful applicants who were admitted; and briefly, the...