Sophie Bayer
Thesis title: Letters into Exile: narratological strategies and identity-forming storytelling in the post-war epistolary correspondence of the Ernst Levin Collection (1946-1962)
PhD (Full-Time)
Year of study: 3
- School of Divinity
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
- Email: s.m.i.bayer@sms.ed.ac.uk
PhD supervisors:
Background
Sophie is a third-year PhD student based at the School of Divinity and the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures. Her PhD project is funded by the Astaire Ernst Levin Collection Scholarship.
Before coming to Edinburgh in January 2019, Sophie completed a BA in Literature, Arts and Media & British and American Studies at the Universität Konstanz and a MA in General and Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Qualifications
MA General and Comparative Literature (Freie Universität Berlin) 2017
BA Literature, Arts and Media & British and American Studies (Universität Konstanz) 2014
Responsibilities & affiliations
Postgraduate Representative British Association for Holocaust Studies 2020/2021
Research Fellow Digital Humanities Posen Library 2022
Current research interests
Sophie's PhD project with the current title 'Letters into Exile: narratological strategies and identity-forming storytelling in the post-war epistolary correspondence of the Ernst Levin Collection (1946-1962)' examines letter correspondences between the Belau-Levins, a Jewish couple who emigrated from Munich to Edinburgh in 1933, and their Non-Jewish friends who decided to remain in Germany. In particular, her thesis investigates the framing of their post-war correspondence that forced those individuals to deal with their own agency and their potential involvement in the atrocities of the Third Reich. Sophie's research aims to provide insights into what writing patterns, literary devices and narratological strategies the letter writers used when speaking about living as witnesses of forced emigration, wartime, the Holocaust and Post-War-Germany.Conference details
Speaker at Postgraduate Conference German Historical Institute London, 01/2022
Organiser Online Postgraduate Conference British Association for Holocaust Studies, 06/2021
Speaker at the Online National Postgraduate Colloquium in German Studies, Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, 10/2020
Speaker at the Postgraduate Conference British Association for Holocaust Studies, University of Exeter, 03/2020
Speaker at the IMLR Graduate Forum Channelling Narratives an der University of London, 03/2020
Speaker at the Women in German Studies Conference, University of Dublin, 11/2019