Tag: refugees

Diffusing Knowledge about Poland in Britain in the First Half of the 19th Century

~ Milosz K. Cybowski

Europe in the 1830s and 1840s was marked by political ferment, with various kinds of nationalism and political ideology challenging the international system established by the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15. One potential tool at the disposal of revolutionaries was public opinion abroad, insofar as the international order depended on enforcement by the great powers—Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, Russia, France, and Great Britain. The last of these was particularly interesting for those on the Continent with a national or liberal agenda because it offered a safe haven for political exiles, its press laws were liberal, and it had a sizeable educated and moneyed public that was interested in constitutional and national questions—a public that might sway government policy or offer financial and moral assistance. Lucy Riall has highlighted the role played by the media and public opinion campaigns in Great Britain during Italy’s struggle for national independence.1 Poles too sought to use such tools.

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Report: Migration and Knowledge

~ Lisa Gerlach

Panel Series at the 40th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association in San Diego, September 29 – October 2, 2016

This panel series focused on a field of research that is emerging at the intersection of the history of knowledge and the history of migration.1 This dynamic field, as series organizer Simone Lässig emphasized in her opening remarks, offers potential not only for historians but also for scholars from other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Up to this point, the historiographies of migration and of knowledge have not had much to say to each other. State, NGO, and academic actors have produced knowledge about migration and migrants, and the production of this knowledge is sometimes studied. We know little, however, about how knowledge was used, produced, and mediated by the migrants themselves. We can fill this gap, we can shed new light on migrants as actors, Lässig argued, by linking the two research fields. In this way, we can learn how migrants acted as bearers, translators, and producers of knowledge in their old and new homelands. It is also possible to investigate how and the degree to which migrants were able to convert the knowledge they brought with them into usable cultural capital in new social, economic, and cultural contexts.

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Call for Papers: Knowledge in Flight

~ Editors

Knowledge in Flight: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Scholar Rescue in North America

“The German Historical Institute, The Leo Baeck Institute and The New School for Social Research are organizing a workshop on the movement of scholars from perilous and intellectually-oppressive political situations to new environments that have allowed them to continue their work or even thrive in their chosen discipline…

“Workshop papers might focus on one or more of the chapters of scholar rescue in history — Jewish émigrés from fascist Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, East European and Russian émigrés during the Cold War, and Latin American intellectuals escaping military dictatorships from the 1960s to the 1980s. Papers could also focus on contemporary issues in scholar rescue, connecting to Africa, Asia, or the Middle East…” (Further details)