Social History Portal IALHI

Call for papers, deadline 30 June 2026
A Foreigners’ War, Their Own Memory
Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and Their Fates
Call for papers
November 25-26, 2026
Military History Institute (U Památníku 2, Prague)
The Spanish Civil War was a crucial moment of international mobilization, ideological polarization, and transnational activism in the first half of the twentieth century. Volunteers who joined both sides of the conflict entered the war with diverse motivations shaped by ideological, political, social, and personal factors. Their experiences represent unique insights into the cultural, political, and military history of the twentieth century. Yet the end of the civil war did not mark the end of their stories. Their fates continued not only into the following global conflict, but also into the decades that came after. Many of their life stories ultimately faded into partial obscurity-an obscurity that, in many countries, persists to this day.
The conference seeks to connect existing scholarship on the Spanish Civil War with broader questions of volunteerism, transnational networks, political mobilization, and historical memory. It will focus on volunteers’ motivations, their military- and everyday experiences, and their postwar trajectories. In addition, the conference will explore the ways in which these experiences have been commemorated, reinterpreted, and forgotten over the decades. Methodologically, it is open to the challenges of contemporary research, from digital humanities to oral history.
The conference aims to reopen debates on the Spanish Civil War as a key transnational conflict of the modern era. We welcome contributions focusing on interbrigadists and other Republican volunteers, as well as those who fought on the Francoist side.
The organizers intend to create an interdisciplinary forum and therefore welcome papers not only from historians but also from scholars in anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, art history, political science, and museum studies.
Preliminary Areas
Volunteers on both sides of the Spanish Civil War
Recruitment, motivations, and ideological frameworks
Combat operations and everyday life
Women volunteers, questions of masculinity, and other gender aspects
Postwar trajectories of volunteers
Internment and other forms of persecution
Second World War as a continuation
Former volunteers within political and state structures
The Spanish Civil War and its international echoes
Global context and the transnational dimension of the conflict
Europe and Spain in the 1930s
Fascism and anti-fascism
Memory, myths, and representations
Politics of memory, remembrance, and forgetting
Cultural reflections and reenactment
Memorials, museums, and other sites of memory
Archival and methodological approaches
New sources and research strategies
Digital humanities and volunteer mapping
Oral history research and working with eyewitnesses
Submission deadline:
June 30, 2026
Conference languages:
English, Czech and Slovak*
Conference date:
November 25-26, 2026
Venue:
Military History Institute (U Památníku 2, Prague)
*Simultaneous interpretation between both languages will be provided on-site.
Please send paper proposals, including an abstract of max. 200 words and short bio to
ondrej.crhak@nm.cz
The full call is available here
Attached document(s)
CFP_CZ-ENG.pdf