Folklore Without Borders

As so often with me, quietness here does not mean that I have been idle. The last year has seen quite a lot of activity, in fact, including publication at last of a couple of long developed pieces, and what felt like a hugely belated first trip to an American Folklore Society conference.

 

What Matt Cheeseman, who took it, tells me was my official AFS portrait.

 

Like much of my other activity, these were in truth also shaped towards a very exciting project now underway that will take up all of this year. We had received confirmation that it was going ahead late last year, but I wanted to hold off mentioning it here until I could tie it in formally with the institution that will be hosting me for the duration. New year new job, yes, but this has been long in preparation.

Over a protracted period, I was able to support my excellent colleague and friend Dr Matthew Cheeseman at the University of Derby in a successful AHRC network funding bid. We received notice we’d been successful late last year, and it’s been a little frantic getting everything sorted and underway, but we have. Matt is the project’s Principal Investigator, and the University of Hertfordshire have taken me back on for the duration as Co-Investigator.

The project is ‘Folklore Without Borders’, a network of academics and organisations working to develop greater diversity within folklore. We are holding an international knowledge exchange on folklore theory, methodology and creative practice, connecting three groups who work with cultural tradition: academia (research, teaching, impact), individual stakeholders (artists, writers; entrepreneurial folklorists) and cultural industries (museums, galleries, archives; media). This network considers both theoretical and practical to make change happen in several domains that would not normally have the opportunity to meet.

 

Part of this involves identifying the obstacles and issues within the sphere of folklore and folkloristics on a sound historical basis, so my developing interest in the reception of folklore is finally becoming a more directed examination of disciplinary history. The open access publication of an article developed from a piece originally written for Jacqueline Simpson’s 90^th birthday marks another gleeful step down that road, with a piece on two Victorian folklorists to follow later in the year.

 

But for now, I’m just looking forward to the network beginning to develop and take on a life of its own. And I’m looking forward to reporting on this more widely.