Refuge in a Moving World Public Conversation: Eva Hoffman & Jonny Steinberg

2 December 2015
UCL's Institute of Advanced Studies and Institute of Global Prosperity will be hosting a conversation between renowned authors Eva Hoffman and Jonny Steinberg.

Both Eva Hoffman and Jonny Steinberg's writing is pertinent to questions we face today around 'refuge', 'asylum', the movement of peoples and the hospitality/hostility they confront. Hoffman's work on memory and migration stems from her own personal experience as the child of Holocaust survivors supplanted from Cracow to Vancouver. Her highly influential Lost in Translation dealt with displacement and language in an autobiographical vein and she has published widely on Polish-Jewish history, the aftermath of the Holocaust and post-1989 transitions in Eastern Europe. Jonny Steinberg's most recent publication Man of Good Hope (2015) chronicles the epic journey of Somalian child refugee Asad Abdullahi as he travelled alone from war-torn Somalia to South Africa and ultimately the USA via Ethiopia and Nigeria. Steinberg's previous publications include books on AIDS in Southern Africa and a study of the notorious gangs in Cape Town's gaols.

The conversation will deal with issues including migration and narration, personal and political investments in the question of refuge, African and European stories of displacement and exile, the ethical and moral imperatives that the current refugee crisis has provoked and the role of writing in recounting and relaying personal tales and testimonies.

This initiative forms part of the network 'Refuge in a Moving World' co-ordinated by Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, (Migration Research Unit, Department of Geography, UCL).