In this lecture we discuss letters and petitions written by refugees from different backgrounds and different contexts, and addressed to a variety of governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental institutions. Our analysis of these extensive sources is presented in our co-authored book, Refugee Voices in Modern Global History (2025). Besides highlighting our key conclusions about population displacement in the modern era, including the concept of refugeedom, we shall discuss issues around archival access and the ethics of researching refugee history. Finally, we shall consider the challenges of dealing with gaps and silences in the archival record and how these might be addressed.

Peter Gatrell is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Manchester where he taught economic and social history, the cultural history of war and refugee history. He is the author of The Making of the Modern Refugee (2013) and The Unsettling of Europe: the Great Migration, 1945 to the Present (2019). He is preparing a book provisionally titled Appointment in Geneva: Refugees and UNHCR, 1951-1975. He was a founding member of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Academy of Social Sciences, and of the Royal Historical Society.

Katarzyna Nowak is a historian specialising in the cultural and social history of the early Cold War and the author of Kingdom of Barracks: Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany and Austria. She is currently working on her book project Knocking on the Vatican’s Gates. Refugees, the Holy See, and the Spectre of Communism, 1945-1958 as a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Vienna.

Prof. Peter Gatrell (Manchester), Dr. Katarzyna Nowak (Wien):
Refugee Voices Across and Beyond the Archive