Date: 23-24 January 2019
Venue: UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, London, UK
The eightieth anniversary of the scheme that permitted over 10,000 unaccompanied, mostly Jewish, children to enter the UK in 1938-39 seems a fitting time to approach a new, critical assessment of the Kindertransport and its origins, rationales, enactment and outcomes. This interdisciplinary conference welcomes papers that examine the Kindertransport with critical scholarly rigor, exploring less well-known aspects of the scheme as well as fresh perspectives on the more familiar Kindertransport themes. Presentations are anticipated to be 20-25 minutes grouped into panels, with questions to follow each segment. Participants will be invited to submit their papers after the symposium for a collected edition on the Critical Approaches to Kindertransport Research, Historiography and Representation.
This conference is being organised by Professor Michael Berkowitz, Dr. Jennifer Craig-Norton, Anita Grosz, Dr. Andrea Hammel and Lesley Urbach. We are inviting contributions from a variety of academic disciplines. Topics may include but are not limited to:
Critical Approaches to Kindertransport Research, Historiography and Representation
Individuals and refugee organisations
Kindertransport carers — their motivations & roles
The parents — their perspectives, feelings and fates
Issues of gender, age and identity
Memory, representation and testimony
The challenges of Kindertransport archival research
Language, education, work and cultural adaptation
Individual communities and the Kindertransport
Kindertransport sub-groups i.e. national, religious, Youth Aliyah, etc.
The Kindertransport and religion
Evacuation and the Kindertransport
Kindertransport and the media, film and literature
Journey narratives
Artistic representations, memory and material objects
Kindertransport memorials and museum representation
Comparative studies with other countries
Abstracts (250 words) and a short biography (100 words), in digital form, should be sent to: KT80Symposium@gmail.com by 15 September 2018.