The UA Ruhr College for Social Sciences and Humanities invites researchers to submit proposals for the international conference Ordinary Men: Perpetrator Memory in Spanish Culture, to be held on 4–5 December 2025 at the University Alliance Ruhr in Essen, Germany. The event is convened by Prof. Susanne Zepp-Zwirner (University of Duisburg-Essen) and Dr Lorraine Ryan (Senior Fellow, College for Social Sciences and Humanities).

The conference challenges the long-standing victim–perpetrator binary in Spanish memory culture of the Civil War and Francoist Dictatorship. Building on the influential “Ordinary Men” thesis, it explores how otherwise unremarkable individuals became active participants in violence, and how concepts such as Primo Levi’s “grey zones” and Michael Rothberg’s “implicated subject” can shed new light on complicity, bystanding, and perpetration in Spanish cultural memory.

Topics include representations of perpetrators, bystanders, and implicated subjects in Spanish literature, film, photojournalism, and history, as well as comparative studies drawing on Holocaust research and other conflicts. Formats include lightning talks, 20-minute papers, and roundtable discussions.

The deadline for submissions is 8 October 2025. For more information about the call, requirements, and submission, please follow the link here.