1. Letter of the President

Čarna Brković, new elected SIEF President, emphasized the continued relevance of SIEF as a platform for ethnologists and folklorists to connect with each other. Especially in today’s context of conflict, polarization, and uncertainty, SIEF offers a platform for collective reflection on our roles as ethnologists and folklorists in a changing world.

2. SIEF2025

The 17th biennial SIEF congress in Aberdeen was a great success. For reports and a photo gallery see the PDF of the Newsletter.

3. Call: SIEF Summer School 2026

The SIEF Summer School 2026 will take place in Athens, 4–11 October 2026. The theme will be Living Things, Lasting Forms, Narratives: Co-creating Heritages.

4. Call: SIEF Young Scholar Prize

Ognjen Kojanić won the 2025 SIEF Young Scholar Prize. The call for the 2027 Prize has now been published.

5. Call: The European Ethnology Transnational Syllabus Collective

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.

6. Call: SIEF Book Series

For more information see the PDF of the SIEF Newsletter.

7. Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property

The working group shares reports on working group activities, member initiatives, and current calls.

8. Working Group Cultural Perspectives on Education and Learning

The new working group held its first panel at the 25th SIEF Congress in Aberdeen.

9. SIEF Working Group in Feminist Approaches to Ethnology and Folklore

The working group announces the next interim meeting in 2026 and draws attention to the collaborative annotated bibliography on feminist theory.

10. Working Group on Food Research

The working group invites you to react on the call for the next conference: Food Encounters: Emplacement and Ethics in Everyday Life.

11. Working Group on Historical Approaches in Cultural Analysis (HACA) and Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property

The two working groups announce their joint conference in May 2026.

12. Working group on Museums and Material Culture

The working group launches an online reading club, open to anyone interested in new perspectives on museums.

13. Call Summer School

Call for applications to join the Summer School Folklore Fellows’ Summer School “Interdisciplinarity and Involvement: Enduring and Emerging Sites of the Vernacular”, Helsinki and Tvärminne, Finland, 17th–21st August 2026

14. Job advertisements

Two job advertisements at Ghent University, Belgium, and Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen

15. Call for Papers

The annual conference of The Folklore Society will be hosted by the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, 5–7 June 2026, with the theme ‘Folklore on the Move’. The deadline for proposals is 14 December 2025.

16. Other news

Conference announcement, workshop reports and other news. For more information see the PDF of the SIEF Newsletter.

17. Calls for Publications

Call for abstracts for a special issue of the Yearbook of Nordic Folklore (“Metamorphosis –Studies in changing relations between people and supernatural beings”) and call for abstracts for a special issue of International Criminology (“Community Voices in Violent Contexts: Unwriting and Rewriting Crime through Collaboration and Participatory Research”)
See the PDF of the SIEF Newsletter

18. SIEF journals: EE and Cultural Analysis

Published:
Ethnologia Europaea 55.2
Cultural Analysis 23.2: Power of Examples
Cultural Analysis celebrated its 25th anniversary at SIEF2025 in Aberdeen.

19. New Publications: new journal issues and new books

For information about new publications see the PDF of the SIEF Newsletter.

20. Obituary

This year, Hungarian academic life suffered a significant loss: ethnologist Vilmos Voigt, Professor Emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, passed away at the age of 85.