How do diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies capture the lived experiences of migration, exile, multilingualism, & cultural transition?

Crossing Borders brings together researchers exploring how life-writing and ego-documents (diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies) capture the lived experiences of migration, exile, multilingualism, and cultural transition. The conference highlights how personal narratives illuminate transnational movement, identity formation, and encounters across borders, languages, and empires.

Topics addressed across the programme…

The Leo Baeck Institute London would like to invite you to another free online screening from the LBI Film Club, starting on Thursday 16 April 2026. We hope all the film lovers among you will continue to enjoy our selection of thought-provoking films exploring the rich, diverse and multi-faceted Jewish experience. This latest offering is compelling historical account of Herzl’s life and vision which invites viewers to reflect on the complexities and legacies shaping Jewish life today.

During the Third Reich, German political, social, economic, and private life was transformed to such an extent that the Holocaust became thinkable and, ultimately, possible. Yet many Germans maintained a ‘not Nazi’ subjectivity, drawing a line between themselves and overly zealous ‘150%’ Nazis. This talk uses the extensive private collection of letters and documents of Annemarie and Heinrich Brenzinger, Sandra Lipner’s great-grandparents from south-west Germany, to discuss why bourgeois Germans who were not enthusiastic about Hitler still willingly embraced the Third Reich.