Digital Folklore: hybrid conference Programme
We have a terrific line-up of speakers on the programme for our Digital Folklore hybrid conference, 28-30 June 2024, online and in-person at Kings College London, Strand, London WC2B 4BG, UK
For more information, and to download the programme and booking form, please visit: https://folklore-society.com/event/digital-folklore-conference/
Programme
Friday 28 June
13:00: Registration, Kings College London, Strand Campus
13:30: Conference opening
14:00-15:30: Session 1: Contextualising the Digital in Folklore
Hannes Mandel: Digital Folklore avant la lettre: William John Thoms’s mid-nineteenth-century social media network. [in person]
Kathleen Ragan: From Folktales to Facebook: A systems approach to the study of narrative across evolutionary time. [in person]
Stella Wisdom: Digital Disruption of Traditional Publishing and Broadcasting Channels: The rise, popularity and preservation of folklore zines, podcasts, livestreams and sound walks in the twenty-first century. [in person]
15:30-16:00: Break
16:00-17:00: Session 2: Methodology
Chris Douce & Tamara Lopez: The Folklore of Software Engineering: A methodology for study. [in person]
Gabriele de Seta: An Algorithmic Folklore: Vernacular creativity in times of everyday automation. [in person]
17:00-17:30: Video Essay: Siobhan O’Reilly: (Dis)Comfort and Liminal Spaces. [online]
17:30-18:30: Drinks reception
Saturday 29 June (parallel sessions all day)
09:00: Registration
09:30-11:00: Parallel Sessions 3A and 3B
Session 3A: Photography
David Clarke & Andrew Robinson: In The Eye of the Beholder: Digital folklore and the Calvine UFO photograph. [online]
Dipti Rani Datta: Folk Photography in the Age of Social Media in Bangladesh: An introduction to the changing landscape. [online]
Daria Radchenko: Heaven as News Screen: Semiotic ideologies of natural phenomena on social media. [online]
Session 3B: From Analogue to Digital
Meghna Choudhury: From Parchment to Pixels: Digital transformation of Indian oral narratives and reinterpretation of The Panchatantra in the digital landscape. [in person]
Maryam Magaji: Remediation in Hausa Folktales on YouTube. [online]
Angelika Rüdiger: Monitoring the Transformations of Gwyn ap Nudd online. [in person]
11:00-11:30: Break
11:30-13:00: Parallel Sessions 4A and 4B
Session 4A: The Weird and the Horrific
Dawn Brissenden: British Cryptids: The continuation of belief online. [in person]
Erika Kvistad: Imaginary Prisons: Maze horror and Minotaur horror in digital folklore. [online]
Aphrodite-Lidia Nounanaki: AI-generated ‘Scary Stories’ and Creepypastas on TikTok: A new version of digital ‘narratives’. [online]
Session 4B: Rituals and Celebrations
Catherine Bannister & Yinka Olusoga: Playing in the Digital Posthuman: Culture, custom, and the ‘entangled’ child through a folklore lens. [in person]
Catherine Bannister, Fiona Scott, Shabana Roscoe & Yao Wang: ‘It was definitely a Pokémon-themed Christmas that we had’: How do children and families sacralise and desacralise elements of digital play during celebratory times? [in person]
Aušra Žičkienė: Round-Number Birthday Celebrations For Seniors In Lithuania: An audiovisual narrative online and contemporary musical folklore. [online]
13:00-14:00: Lunch break
14:00-15:30: Parallel Sessions 5A and 5B
Session 5A: Public Authority and Public Health
Simon Gall: The Institutional Harnessing of Vernacular Authority in Traumatic Times: The use of Scots language in NHS Grampian’s online public health communications during the COVID-19 pandemic. [in person]
Andrea Kitta: God Gave Me an Immune System: Religious belief, anti-masking, and anti-vaccination sentiments online in the United States during COVID. [in person]
Hanna-Kaisa Lassila: Public Shaming and Vernacular Disciplining on Social Media as Entertainment. [online]
Session 5B: Memes
Paul Cowdell: Memes: When the digital world put the human back into the non-material. [in person]
Tina Paphitis: Cheeky! The cultural and political history of some digital folklore. [in person]
Oleksandr Pankieiev: (De)Constructing Hero Motifs in the Digital Folklore of the Russo-Ukrainian War. [in person]
15:30-16:00: Break
16:00-17:30: Parallel Sessions 6A and 6B
Session 6A: Conspiracy Theories
Diana Coles: Warming Pans and Moonbumps: Mythologising the royal family. [in person]
Tim Tangherlini: Parler Games: Conspiracy theory, conspiracy and insurrection. [online]
Marc Tuters: Folk Narratives of Distrust: On the socio-technical dynamics of conspiricization. [in person]
Session 6B: Art and Aesthetics
Amy Gray: Cottagecore Capitalism: Trending hashtags, throwaway culture, and landfill. [in person]
India Lawton: Little Red Riding Hood Online: Visual arts exploring the woods metaphor and the suppression of the female voice in the digital world. [in person?]
Ruby Sage McGowan: Goblin Lore to Goblincore: How old stories inspired a new generation’s online identity. [in person]
Sunday 30 June (parallel sessions until 11:30)
09:00: Registration
09:30-11:00: Parallel Sessions 7A and 7B
Session 7A: Humour
Ian Brodie: Has TikTok Saved Jokes? The presence of joke-telling in short-form online video. [in person]
Drake Hansen: Your Flop Era is Showing: Notes on the aesthetic creations of a camp TikTok community [in person]
Lauren (LG) Fadiman: ‘To the FBI agent watching me through my phone’: Social media, the surveillance imaginary, and the erotics of observation in a Twitter joke cycle. [in person]
Session 7B: Transforming Bodies and Sacrality
Sophia Kingshill: Digital Dualism: The online Doppelgänger and its analogues. [in person]
Helen Frisby: Digital Deathways in Twenty-first Century Britain. [in person]
Sonia Prodan: Sacred (Online) Space: The journey of faith from offline to virtual veneration. [online]
11:00-11:30: Break
11:30-13:00: Session 8: Narrative Communities
Nicolas Le Bigre: Emergent Folk Narrative Forms in Online Commentating. [in person]
Maria Isabel Lemos: Posting ‘nos tradison’. Mapping diasporic digital networks and cultural flows. [online]
Francesca Padget: Fandom Folklore: Exploring identity formation and community in fanfiction culture. [online]
13:00: Conference ends
Conference fees and Registration: Reduced rates apply to: Conference speakers; Folklore Society members; Seniors; Students; Unwaged/Low Earner. Free for: Student speakers; Kings College London students; Kings College staff attending online (£30 in person)
In-person participants: Full conference: £110 reduced rate; £160 standard rate. Day rates also available: Contact us for details
To register: Download the Booking Form here
Online participants: Full conference: £80 reduced rate with Promo Code; £100 standard rate. Day rates also available: Contact us for details
To register, visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-folklore-hybrid-conference-tickets-837543654617?
To get the Promo code for reduced rate online tickets: log in to the Folklore Society Members area at https://folklore-society.com/members-only or email us at https://folklore-society.com/about/contact/