Blog

The UK Government is proposing to ratify the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and, accordingly, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is inviting participation in a public consultation via an online survey and online roundtable discussions. The survey, which closes at the end of February 2024, can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/2003-unesco-convention-for-the-safeguarding-of-the-intangible-cultural-heritage/consultation-on-the-2003-unesco-convention-for-safeguarding-of-the-intangible-cultural-heritage...

We congratulate Xinrui Xie, winner of The Folklore Society President’s Prize 2023, for her essay ‘Shadowed Maternity: The Perpetuating Ambivalence Towards Motherhood in Ubume Narratives’

We are very sad to learn of the death of Dr Gillian Bennett, former editor of our journal Folklore from 1994 to 2002, scholar of contemporary legends, supernatural beliefs, ghost narratives, history of folklore scholarship, women folklorists, and author of numerous publications, including her wonderful Traditions of Belief (1987). She will be much missed by all...

University College London Special Collections have found a letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Katharine Briggs in a box of her correspondence in our Folklore Society Archives. The other side of the correspondence, K.M. Briggs’ letters to Tolkien, are in the Tolkien family archive at The Bodleian Library. You can read more about the correspondence between...

Doc Rowe was in the news again on 5 November 2023, with an Observer article about his work: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/nov/05/cheese-rolling-straw-bears-and-weird-rituals-galore-one-mans-mission-to-record-all-of-british-folklore The article draws attention to the Crowdfunder to fund the digitisation of parts of Doc’s archive of the film and video recordings he has made of seasonal events in Britain over the past 60 years. The crowdfunder...

We are delighted to announce that the winner of The Katharine Briggs Award 2023 is Una McIlvenna for her book Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe, 1500-1900 published by Oxford University Press Congratulations Una! Una was unable to join us from Melbourne for the award presentation on 7 November, so she has...

We were very sad to hear of the death on 2 November of Prof. Will Ryan, scholar of Russian history and culture, and author of The Bath House at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (1999). He was President of The Folklore Society from 2005 to 2008, was our Honorary Librarian...

It’s that time of year again! We’d like to see your neeps, pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, Hop-tu-naa lanterns Tag @FolkloreSociety on Insta or  X(ex-Twitter) in your lantern photo or post your photo on our Facebook  page