Dr Anthony Grenville

Profile

Dr Anthony Grenville has been Chair of the Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies since 2013. Previously, he lectured in German at the Universities of Reading, Bristol and Westminster (1971-96). He was editor of the monthly journal of the Association of Jewish Refugees (2006-17), co-director of the programme of filmed interviews ‘Refugee Voices: The Association of Jewish Refugees Audio-Visual Testimony Archive’ (2003-08), and co-creator of the exhibition Continental Britons: Jewish Refugees from Nazi Europe (2002). He sat for several years on the Beirat of the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung and, in 2020, was awarded Ehrenmitgliedschaft of the Gesellschaft. His main research interests are the history of Jewish refugees from the German-speaking countries who came to Britain to escape Nazism, and exile literature. His publications include Continental Britons: Jewish Refugees from Nazi Europe (London, 2002); [ed. with M. Malet] Changing Countries: The Experience of German-speaking Exiles from Hitler in Britain, from 1933 to Today (London, 2002; [with M. Bearman et al.] Wien – London, Hin und Retour: Das Austrian Centre in London 1939 bis 1947 (Vienna, 2004); ‘“Linke Leute von rechts”: Thomas Mann’s Naphta and the Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early Years of the Weimar Republic’ in Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’: A Casebook, ed. by Hans Rudolf Vaget (Oxford, 2008); Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria in Britain 1933-1970. Their Image in the 'AJR Information' (London/Portland, 2010); Stimmen der Flucht: Österreichische Emigration nach Großbritannien ab 1945 (Vienna, 2011); ‘Academic Refugees in Wartime Oxford: An Overview’, in Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, ed. by Sally Crawford, Katharina Ulmschneider and Jás Elsner (Oxford, 2017); and Encounters with Albion. Britain and the British in Texts by Jewish Refugees from Nazism (Cambridge, 2018), as well as some 140 leading articles in the AJR Journal (2006-17). His latest publication is an essay entitled 'Childhood Trauma as Represented in Literary Works by Jewish Refugees from Nazism in Britain' which appeared in Innocence and Experience. Childhood and the Refugees from Nazism in Britain edited by Charmian Brinson and Anna Nyburg (Oxford, 2024).