'Contested Youth'

On 6 May 2016, Helen presented a paper entitled ‘Contested Youth? The instrumentalisation of testimony in life-writing by former Nazi elite-school pupils’ at an international conference entitled ‘Life of Testimony / Testimony of Lives: A Life-Writing Conference’, at Queen Mary, University of London.

The conference, which was organised by Lotte Fikkers and Melissa Schuh, aimed to explore the notion of testimony as an idea that pervades the practice, reception and interpretation of life-writing across time periods, academic disciplines and literatures.

Keynote speakers included Professor Paul Strohm (Columbia University), and Professor Roger Woods (Nottingham University).