New Year, New Phase, New Place

Luckily, there were still some good news in 2020 despite Covid-19: After successful international external evaluation in autumn 2020, the “London Moment” project has been granted a second phase as a Freigeist-Research Group funded by the Volkswagen-Foundation.

With this second phase, starting 1.1.2021, the primary location of the project “The London Moment” moves to the Universities of Bayreuth and Bamberg, who have substantially supported the application and will be anchored at their joint Institute for Frankonian History, sharing its interest in spatial history and new endeavours in Digital History. Other parts of the project will be concluded at HU Berlin.

The first phase of the project discovered, displayed and analysed exile networks and their impact of European governments in exile (Eichenberg), European jurists (Weydner) and Anti-Colonial movements (Marty), as well as explored the roles of the Southeastern governments (Tsakmaklis), celebrations and leisure in exile (Steinbömer) and British-Czech relations (Kudrnová) The results of these research endeavours are currently being concluded and prepared for publication.

Based on these results, the second phase “The London Moment. Behind the Scenes: Invisible Brokers and Financial Enablers” aims for a further widening of the analysis of exile networking in Great Britain during the Second World War. In this new phase of the project, we will focus on aspects that have been made visible by the prior work:  firstly, the importance of women as “invisible brokers” within exile networks (Eichenberg) and, secondly, the impact of economic and financial experts (to be advertised). Additionally, data collected in both phases will be processed for further quantitative analysis, complemented by methods and techniques of the Digital Humanities. and, ultimately, open access digital publication (project group).

Looking forward to these future endeavours and wishing you all a better 2021!