SIEF is an international organization that facilitates and stimulates cooperation among scholars working within European Ethnology, Folklore Studies, Cultural Anthropology and adjoining fields. SIEF organizes large international congresses and smaller workshops. Read more about SIEF...
Seventeen thematical Working Groups are active within SIEF which organize their own congresses and workshops.
SIEF News
SIEF2025: Aberdeen, Scotland: June 3–6 2025
Early-bird registration is closing at 23:59 on 25 April.
All convenors, authors and contibutors must confirm their participation by registering by 25 April or their content will be withdrawn.
SIEF talk on "Culture in Dialogue" - “Heritage at War. Plan and Prepare”
SIEF is pleased to invite you to another talk on “Culture in Dialogue”. The topic of the conversation will be the recently published book “Heritage at War. Plan and Prepare”, edited by Mark Dunkley, Anna Tulliach, and Lisa Mol.
The talk will take place on Zoom on Tuesday, 21 January, at 6pm CET (Amsterdam).
Please register here: Register
Marking the 70th anniversary of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and in the current context of devastating conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, among others, the book “Heritage at War – Plan and Prepare” brings together military, academic, and heritage practitioners’ voices from across the Euro-Atlantic, North Africa and the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific to explore how lessons learned from past experiences of conflict can inform approaches to the safeguarding of cultural heritage today. The book addresses how the military, the heritage sector and other stakeholders in Human Security can, and must, collaborate to give primacy to people and protect tangible and intangible cultural heritage under attack. The volume’s case studies highlight interdisciplinary efforts to protect heritage in conflict zones, drawing out guidance for those working in the Heritage Sector in these contexts, with specific relevance to those engaged in cultural heritage protection and those working in related interdisciplinary fields. Reviewing the historic relationship between heritage and armed conflict, and offering lessons for present-day practitioners, Heritage at War shows how, in different contexts, heritage can be a catalyst and target of conflict, an obstacle to stabilisation, and yet also a potential vector of peace-building and the return to normality.
More information >>
Lisa Mol will speak on behalf of the editorial team, while Regina Bendix will serve as a discussant.
Lisa Mol is the Professor of Geomorphology and Heritage in Conflict at the University of the West of England, and an expert in heritage stone deterioration, in particular that associated with active combat. She leads funded projects, including “Heritage in the Crossfire”, and supports initiatives and colleagues in conflict zones in the documentation and remediation of damage to built heritage. She will be speaking on behalf of the Crossfire' and supports initiatives and colleagues in conflict zones in the documentation and remediation of damage to built heritage.
Regina F. Bendix is a professor of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen. She has contributed to critical heritage studies for more than two decades, gathered in her volume “Culture and Value. Tourism, Heritage, and Property” (2018). With colleagues in Israel and Palestine, she worked on and co-edited the book “June 1967 in Personal Narratives of Israelis and Palestinians” (2022). She served as co-editor of “Ethnologia Europaea” and “Narrative Culture” and is part of the editorial team of “Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft”.
On the SIEF Culture in Dialogue Seminar Series:
SIEF stands for free and open communication across boundaries, borders, and disciplines. Today, with old divisions reappearing in Europe and beyond, we believe that specialists in Ethnology, Folklore, Anthropology, and related fields, have a special capacity to highlight lessons of the past and show that, through dialogue, we can reach better understandings of the world and each other.
Since 2022 the SIEF Board has introduced Culture in Dialogue, a series of occasional online seminars intended to encourage, initiate, and develop communication across boundaries.
The inaugural event was held on 14 July 2022 and featured Stef Jansen (University of Sarajevo) speaking on How can we formulate non-identitarian questions about 'ethnic war'?
Tribute to Thomas Hylland-Eriksen
SIEF would like to pay tribute to esteemed professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Thomas Hylland-Eriksen, who sadly passed away on Nov 27, 2024.
We honor the immense contribution Hylland-Eriksen made to European Ethnology, Folklore Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and adjoining disciplines. Not only was he an academic giant, whose invigorating research is widely read and discussed across the globe, but he also served as a lodestar, as an engaged teacher and a public intellectual. His legacy will continue to inspire scholarly generations.
We would like to express our heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones.
we share a beautifully written obituary from Thorgeir Kolshus, head of Department of Social Anthropology, and Svein Stølen, rector, University of Oslo.
On behalf of the SIEF Board/Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore/International Society of Ethnology and Folklore,
Marie Sandberg, President
Thomas McKean, Vice-President
Sophie Elpers, Executive Vice-President
SIEF Summer School 2024 “Postscapes Matter”
23-27 September 2024 in Zagreb, Croatia
The SIEF Summer School 2024 explores how and why postscapes matter; as a lived experience, a historical or temporal condition and as a conceptual tool or a way of knowing. We invite our participants to consider: What comes after post-? What is left of post-, as a concept? Why is it still important to think in terms of diverse postscapes?
More information on the Summer School page.
SIEF Working Groups News
Living Eating Habits, Revitalized Foodways and the Concepts of Tradition and Food Heritage
The 24th Food Research working group conference took place at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest, Hungary 18-20 September 2024.
Over the three days, 44 speakers from 14 countries gathered over three days across 9 sessions to examine the role of food and related traditions in shaping or preserving the identities of communities, with a focus on globalization, festivalization, and sustainability. Read more here >>
Lost Places and Abandoned Landscapes
Space-lore and Place-lore working group conference, taking place 29th–30th October 2024; University of Szeged, Hungary
Cultural landscapes across the globe have experienced rapid and profound transformations. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, economic, political and climatic shifts have compelled various communities to leave their homelands and adapt to new environments. As a result, numerous areas have been depopulated and, local landscape management and practices vanished. Read more here >>
The 15th Conference of the SIEF Ritual Year Working Group: Food, Feasts, Festivities, & Folklore
The theme revolves around the importance and meaning of food. The conference aims to highlight the centrality of gustatory experiences and gastronomical practices in various ethnolinguistic groups around the world. Read more here >>
SIEF JOURNALS
New issue of Ethnologia Europaea, Vol. 54, no. 1
This new issue of Ethnologia Europaea comes with several changes to the structure and editorship of the journal. It is with poignant memories and happy expectations for Ethnologia Europaea that we write about a new era: to begin, EE has just moved to a new publisher at the start of 2024. Berghahn Journals will now be our home for the foreseeable future, and we are already enjoying the professional atmosphere of this independent, progressive and social science-friendly publishing house. With this switch from OLH, EE now becomes part of Berghahn's OpenAnthro model.
We feel this change will usher in a bright new future for the journal because it will give it much more visibility, as we will be part of a collection of high-ranking journals, including Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale (SA/AS) and the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures (AJEC). Please do recommend the OpenAnthro collection to your libraries; it is library subscriptions that make this “open model” possible.
New Issue of Cultural Analysis, 21:2 (2023)
Approaching Climate Change Adaptation:
Knowledge, Power, Communication
The consequences of human-induced climate change are as diverse as the adaptation strategies people have started to develop. Approaches to climate change range from local initiatives to national and global programs and are embedded in various knowledge systems and partially contesting world views. This special issue aims to improve the understanding of those dynamics that are linked to knowledge, power, and communication when adapting to the diverse repercussions of climate change. The communication and integration of this situated knowledge are considered crucial for fair and transparent climate change adaptation measures.
However, this integration is also described as problematic, highlighting different epistemologies, competing political agendas, societal and economic inequalities, and clashing ontologies. The impact of climate change on society is currently discussed mostly in terms of adaptation, resilience, and vulnerability. Ideas of adaptation are often regarded as “neutral” drivers of action and seem to be “the only viable option for survival” (de Wit 2014, 57). However, the rationalities which characterize current adaptation concepts are criticized because they have been shaped predominantly by the natural sciences and ignore aspects of climate justice as well as social, cultural, political, and economic conditions on the ground (Nightingale et al. 2020).
The issue is co-edited with guest editors Sophie Elpers, Arnika Peselmann, Silja Klepp & Domenica Farinella.
