Dr Monja Stahlberger

Research Interests:

My work examines exile and migration in 20th-century Europe, with a focus on German and Austrian refugees and the role of ego-documents in shaping experiences of displacement, memory, and identity. I engage with Anglo-German relations, German-Jewish history, and the transnational and intergenerational forms of exile.

In my current position as part of the Nation of Refuge project, I am investigating the cultural and historical significance of personal narratives within contexts of displacement and exile in 1930s and 40s Britain. My project examines how diaries and other ego-documents function as spaces of negotiation, for example between belonging and exclusion, and between memory and identity. Building on my previous work, this research explores how everyday writing captures the lived experience of refuge, uncertainty, and adaptation, and how these narratives contribute to broader understandings of migration, memory, and the legacy of forced displacement. For this, I am also taking into account the attitudes and viewpoints of British society.

My PhD analysed Kindertransport diaries and negotiations of belonging; my postdoctoral research so far examined diaries as historical sources and the representation of everyday life, and transnational and transgenerational German-Jewish identities within exile families.