I'm trying not to turn this into an annual round-up rather than an actual blog, but 2024 was quite the year for me. I spent it as Co-I on the AHRC-funded 'Folklore Without Borders' research network, looking at ways of embedding greater diversity, equality and inclusion in British folkloristics.
The network was fascinating and gruelling: it raised more questions than it could possibly answer, so we feel a definite need to continue that work beyond the original funded period. Economic privilege and exclusion were already identified as big issues for the network, because we looked to folklore as a broader assemblage of researchers, practitioners, creative industry professionals, entrepreneurs and communicators, all working across the domains of academia, independent stakeholding and cultural industries. Given this, we're looking at ways of ensuring the broadest and most equitable access and participation. It will continue, because the issues it is addressing remain.
The American Folklore Society have been an invaluable project partner throughout, so it was a great delight to return to their conference to present on it in November. (We also rescued a dog, but that's a story for another time). We already have several conference presentations planned for this year to discuss its work further.
Part of this work has involved deepening our historical understanding of our discipline in order to know more about how we arrived at the present position. I'd originally started writing about this rather side-on, through considerations of folkloresque takes on folkloristics. I'm pleased that my latest work in this direction, writing about Doctor Who and the Grimm brothers, appeared in a fine collection of essays published in the summer: Möbius Media: Popular Culture, Folklore, and the Folkloresque, edited by Jeffrey A. Tolbert and Michael Dylan Foster. Not the least pleasure of the AFS conference in Albuquerque was getting to hang out with the editors and other contributors.
I've also finally got round to talking about that history more directly in various ways. After the slightly pretextual comment on the Grimms, it's been a pleasure recently to review Ann Schmiesing's new biography of the brothers for BBC History Magazine (forthcoming). In the summer I finally published a long-delayed article on 'Some Unpublished Correspondence Between William Forsell Kirby and William Alexander Clouston', which is available Open Access. I'm also shortly to be teaching a course on the history of folkloristics, that I'm intending to be the basis for further published work.
Finally, the end of the year saw publication of perhaps the most personal piece I've yet published. '"The Sky is Too Big": Reclaimed Flatlands and Their Communities, What Happens When the Edge of the World Becomes Its Centre, and Romanticization in Fieldwork' developed from a paper I gave at the FLS conference in 2023. While it's very specific to my own position in relation to Romney Marsh, I think that its questions about the personal positioning of the researcher are more widely applicable. That said, a great deal of my delight in its publication was being able to share such magnificent vistas as this one.
