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Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies (EXILE)

Exile Centre Triennial Conferences

The Research Centre has organised conferences since the 1990s on various topics relating to German and Austrian exile from Nazism, and continues to do so at approximately three-year intervals. A selection of the papers given at these conferences are now published in the Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, published by Brill. 

The last conference was held in September 2023, taking as its theme the refugees in trade, industry and engineering. 

Refugees from Nazism to Britain in Trade, Industry and Engineering

13–14 September 2023

Image-Inside H sigler factory (002).jpg
Workers at the hosiery factory H. Sigler in Chemnitz (image courtesy of Nick Sigler)

The conference focused on refugees from Nazism to Britain in trade, industry and engineering, a subject which has so far not received general scrutiny even though local stories of refugee enterprises have been published. Papers given at the conference included subjects such as the Trading Estates in Special Areas of Britain in the 1930s and the refugee enterprises established there, the implications of internment on refugee industrialists, the significant technological contribution by the refugees to the war effort as well as many individual accounts of businesses transferred from Germany and other countries under Nazi threat to Britain. That these industrialists were major providers of employment, foreign currency and innovation in industry has so far been insufficiently acknowledged.

Programme [PDF]

Selected papers from the conference will be published as vol. 24 of the Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, edited by Anna Nyburg and Charmian Brinson.

Previous Conferences