TRANSNATIONAL FOLKLORE: Rethinking the Nineteenth-Century History of Folklore Studies (Conference: LMU, Munich, May 22-23, 2025)

We are happy to announce and share the program of the Workshop, Transnational Folklore: Rethinking the Nineteenth-Century History of Folklore Studies.

The two-day event will take at the Institute of European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis at LMU Munich on May 22 and 23, 2025.

The Workshop is part of the project “Actors ‒ Narratives ‒ Strategies: Constellations of Transnational Folklore Research, 1875‒1905,” funded by the German Research Foundation, and isorganized by:

• Frauke Ahrens (Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, LMU Munich)
• Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Department of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara)
• Christiane Schwab (Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, LMU Munich)

The Workshop program is available in the PDF inserted below.

The workshop explores ‘transnational folklore’ in nineteenth-century Europe and beyond, with the aim to investigate how transnational processes influenced the development, professionalisation, and systematisation of folklore theories and practices. Challenging established histories of folklore, the goal is to reveal alternative framework analysis and approaches by examining the new insights offered by a transnational perspective in understanding folklore knowledge production and circulation. Among its guiding questions, pursued in diverse national and disciplinary contexts, are the following:

1. Transnational Practices and Knowledge Formats. How was transnational folklore research organised? In what ways did it manifest through personal connections, cross-border methodologies, publications, events, and other forms of intellectual and practical collaboration?
2. Agendas and Logics of Regional and National Folklore Research within Transnational Frameworks. What significance did transnational collaboration hold for regional and transnational processes of institutionalisation? What were the motives and goals behind establishing and maintaining transnational contacts? How did transnational projects contribute to delineating disciplinary boundaries and strengthening folklore research as an independent discipline in different national/regional contexts?
3. Actors of Transnational Folklore Research. Who were the key players in folklore studies whose relationships and knowledge practices transcended nation-state borders? What were their motifs, strategies, and socioeconomic and biographical preconditions that enabled them to operate on a transnational scale? And what factors may have posed challenges to them?
4. Narratives in Transnational Folklore Research. Which narratives determined transnational cooperation and/or were produced and reproduced within it? How did these narratives function as instruments of shared knowledge horizons, interests, and problems, creating a ‘disciplinary identity’? How has transnational collaboration been affected by different perceptions of the role and methodology of folklore studies?  
5. Impact of Early Transnational Endeavours. How can research on transnational folklore studies change the way we look at the development of the discipline in different national/regional research contexts? In which ways might it broaden the historiography of folklore studies and add new facets to established narratives of the field’s history?
6. Doing Transnational Historiography. How can we investigate the history of folklore research beyond national concepts and methodologies? What sources lead us to transnational networks, actors, and endeavours? What are the difficulties in researching transnational folklore and how can we overcome them methodologically and theoretically?

The project is supported by BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology.