The European Ethnology Transnational Syllabus Collective
How can we teach European ethnology beyond and across the boundaries of national ethnological traditions? How do we convey to our students that the boundaries of a language are not the boundaries of the discipline, and that there is much to learn from the diverse ethnological traditions across Europe? Since 1964 SIEF has provided an umbrella framework for bringing together researchers in European ethnology and folklore studies beyond and across national traditions.
With the transnational syllabus of European ethnology, SIEF invites its members to critically reflect on how the national canons of our discipline are taught, while envisioning the teaching and learning of European ethnologies from non-national, more than national, transnational, and/or European perspectives. The European Ethnology Transnational Syllabus Collective has several aims:
- to create an open source for sharing curricula across national boundaries thereby enhancing and strengthening transnational knowledge circulation;
- to decenter existing national scholarly canons by thinking across and beyond their boundaries, and not to create an alternative scholarly canon;
- to offer a partial and fragmented reading of a theme – not all European countries or languages can or should be included in such a syllabus, as the aim is not to be representative;
- to include underrepresented voices in our scholarly disciplines while decentering existing national scholarly canons.
Members of the SIEF Taskforce on transnational syllabus have identified a set of guidelines to enhance transnational exchanges in teaching across national traditions:
- Collaborative: We encourage the collaborative development of such a syllabus by a group of at least three scholars from different countries who work within different traditions of European ethnology.
- Theme-specific: A syllabus may be developed around a specific theme (e.g. “Transnational syllabus of European ethnological approaches to migration”, “Histories of European ethnologies”, “Patchwork syllabus on music and dance in European ethnologies”, etc.).
- Situated: A syllabus should be knowingly and intentionally partial, incomplete, and situated within the particular perspective of the team that developed it.
- Plural: Given their partial and fragmented character, there may be several syllabi on the same theme.
- DEI-oriented: Each syllabus should include traditionally underrepresented scholars (e.g. women, Roma, minorities, migrants), keeping the SIEF DEI lens in the foreground.
SIEF invites its members to form teaching collaborations and collectives with colleagues from other traditions of ethnology and folklore in order to jointly develop new syllabi on various themes. This work may take several forms, including open classrooms, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), Erasmus+ supported Blended Intensive Programs (BIP), and others.
The European Ethnology Transnational Syllabus Collective will host a digital meeting to facilitate cooperation among our members. If you are interested in taking part in this initiative, please contact us at sief(at)meertens.knaw.nl by 01 December 2025.
