“Migrants have stood at the heart of modern Europe’s experience, whether trying to escape danger, to find a better life or as a result of deliberate policy, whether moving from the countryside to the city, or between countries, or from outside the continent altogether.” We are delighted that Peter Gatrell’s newest book, The Unsettling of…
Madame Mouravieff’s Plea to the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, November 1920
‘I am so tired; I have been suffering too much during my life and I am overwhelmed with grief’. Thus wrote a female refugee of Russian origin in November 1920, part of a two-page letter to the Commissioner of Police in Bombay, signed ‘Madame Mouravieff’. One of the challenges of this project is of encountering…
Polish Refugee Women from the British Colonial Africa and Their Fierce Protest Against Resettlement Procedures
In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt acting as a chairperson of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights received a petition that included the following words: We dare to request that you present on the international forum the question, which concerns all Displaced Persons, of a radical revision of the requirements and exorbitant restrictions applied to…
“Fragments”by Mei Yuk Wong
Responding to the archival material gathered for our project, artist Mei Yuk Wong created an exhibition engaging with the voices of refugees from the past. She used letters, newspaper cuttings, notes and pictures to create an installation which lets us glimpse into traces left by refugees and collected by historians to reconstruct their stories. Printed…
Conference Presentation: Democratizing Displacement, University of Oxford, 18-19 March 2019
On Monday 18 March 2019, three members of the Reckoning with Refugeedom team presented their research together on a panel at the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre’s 2019 conference, on ‘Democratizing Displacement’. The papers delivered were as follows: Alex Dowdall ‘“The Greatest Parliament of Men”: Refugees’ Petitions to the League of Nations, 1919-1938’ Peter…
Blog Post: Corsica’s Russian Refugees
In late-April 1921, a group of almost 3,000 refugees boarded the steamer ‘Rion’ in Constantinople. These people were, for the most part, former soldiers of the White Russian Armies, along with their wives and children. Having fled their homeland after their defeat in the Russian Civil War, they were now trying to make their way…
Event: Monday 8 October 2018, Manchester: People of Nowhere
One important aspect of the partnership between Reckoning with Refugeedom and ArtReach http://artreach.biz/ is a series of contributions to Journeys Festival International, in Leicester, Manchester and Portsmouth, enabling us to disseminate the results of our research and to engage with new audiences. In Manchester we combined with students in the Drama Department at the University…
Event: Tuesday 21 August 2018, University of Leicester: Shedding light on historical stories of displacement and forced migration
Peter Gatrell and Kasia Nowak will discuss their new research project into the history of “refugeedom” (1919-1975) on Tuesday 21st August as part of positive community festival During Leicester’s 2018 Journeys Festival international, where the creative talents of exceptional refugee and asylum seeker artists are celebrated, the University of Leicester’s DICE unit is hosting an…
Event: Tuesday 21 August 2018, Linking the voices of World War Two refugees with the voices of contemporary refugees
On 21 August 2018, during Leicester’s 2018 Journeys Festival International, filmmaker Parang Kherzi launched a visual response to materials uncovered by the Reckoning with Refugeedom project, entitled The Little Whale on the Beach. The screening was followed by a discussion between Parang, Peter Gatrell, Kasia Nowak, and audience members. A little boy plays on the…
