Organised by the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung (International Society for Exile Research) and the Centre for Irish-German Studies in the University of Limerick, this was the first time Ireland held such a conference. Previous conferences took place in Frankfurt, Zurich, Vienna and Dortmund.

However, one Irish-German conference was held in Limerick in 2004, but it was not on the same international scale as this year's event. The conference looked at experiences of migration in a range of different contexts – from Irish emigration and re-migration to experiences of refugees from Nazi-Germany in Ireland and Canada.

In addition, there was analysis of literary reflections on migration as well as an examination of present-day Polish immigration to Ireland and France.

Dr Gisela Holfner, senior lecturer in German and joint director of the Centre for Irish-German Studies, has been based at the university for 12 years. "No one in Ireland knew much about exile before," she said. The centre started its work in 1997 by gathering all aspects of Irish-German relations and putting it together in a clear and comprehensive way.

The starting point of interest was a few works by John Hennig, who was forced to flee Nazi Germany and spent the war-time and some years afterwards in Ireland. During his stay in this country, Hennig was an exceptionally prolific author and made a particular contribution to Irish-German literary and general intercultural studies. He was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1947.

Dr Holfner has published eight books, one of which is the edited writings of John Hennig, titled John Hennig's Exile in Ireland. Her works also include monographs and many articles in various journals. "We wanted people to get the complete picture about exile in Ireland," she said.

Dr Holfner discovered a few interesting facts during her work and research. For example, the Schrödinger Building in UL has a direct relationship to German exile. The famous Austrian physicist chose exile during World War Two, and travelled to Ireland with his family in 1939. He was a privileged refugee and lived here until 1956.

The second fact is that Friedrich Engels, the German social scientist and philosopher, who developed communist theory, was fond of Ireland and wanted to write a book about it. Not many people know this, but he did a massive amount of work in learning about this country, even the language, and also married an Irish woman. Dr Holfner wants to publish another book revealing many interesting details about Irish side of life of Friedrich Engels, and presented an overview of exile in Ireland last Friday

During last weekend's conference Romana Kopeckova, a graduate from Masaryk Universit in Czech Republic and now a student at Trinity College Dublin, presented the paper: The Polish Immigration to Ireland & France.

She revealed the results from the recent sociolinguistic questionnaire, which was a part of a project titled Second Language Acquisition and Native Language Maintenance in the Polish Diaspora in Ireland and France by TCD. The project was designed to investigate the Polish community in Ireland from a number of perspectives.

"We would like to find out how well Poles are integrating in Ireland, and what challenges they are encountering with regard both to English language acquisition and to interaction with the host culture," said Ms Kopeckova. She went through the statistical analysis of the survey, comparing past Polish immigration in France with today's European Union movement.

It was the most relevant part of the conference to the situation in Ireland today. The second part of the two-day event focused on films. The 13-minute film Blind Eye (2007) was inspired by the book of Mary Rose Doorly's Hidden Memories, with a slightly edited screenplay. The film is a part of ten part series written by different Irish authors. "They are refugee stories which were forgotten, now it's time to show them to people," the producer of the film said.

University of Limerick lecturer Breda Gray addressed the issue of Irish emigration and return migration in the 1950s, while Piaras MacEinri presented Ireland – Land of Immigration. Galway Professor Emeritus Eoin Bourke read from the acclaimed memoir Last Waltz in Vienna by George Clare

Other conference events include readings, book launch, and papers from academics from Ireland, France, Germany and Austria. In closing the conference, cinematographer and award winning photographer Wolf Suschitzky, who came as a 25-year old exile to England, introduced two fascinating films rarely seen, both of which boast him as cameraman: No Resting Place (1951), which was nominated for two Bafta awards, and Cradle of Genius (1961), a short film about the Abbey Theatre.