We are extending the deadline for the call for working groups to September 30th 2026. Below and attached you will find the call, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Anne Duggan (a.duggan@wayne.edu) if you have any questions. Below you will see descriptions of the 2025-2026 working groups. A downloadable version (docx) is here.
Call for ISFNR Working Groups 2026-2027
The ISFNR Executive Committee is proposing a call for Working Groups. The aim of the Call for the establishment of the Working groups is to give members more opportunity to engage with other members and discuss the topics of their particular interest promptly, in informal online meetings, exchange information on the studies on the topic, discuss their work in progress and so on and so forth. Working groups may also organize mini online symposiums or public online talks. The Working Groups program hopes to bring members together to discuss various critical approaches, themes, and topics of common interest. Possible topics may include the following, but feel free to propose any topic you wish: ghosts stories; humour; internet folklore; gender, feminism, and sexuality; disability; computational folkloristics, etc.
Anyone wishing to propose a new or continuing working group should submit an application (see below) describing the theme the future working group intends to pursue together, the activities they propose to carry out over the course of a specific period of time (a month, three months, a year), including how many times group members would potentially meet (i.e., once every other week for three months; one a month for six months, etc.). Applications can be sent via email to Anne Duggan (a.duggan@wayne.edu) by September 30th 2026.
Proposals will be discussed by the executive committee for approval and the working group coordinator(s) will be notified of the committee’s decision by September 28th 2026. Working groups are expected to start meeting sometime in October through the end of the academic year.
APPLICATION FORM. Please include the following information in your Working Groups application.
Working Group Title:
New Working Group: yes/no
Continuing Working Group: yes/no
If continuing, please provide a 500-word summary of your activities in 2025-2026.
Working group coordinator(s): No more than 2.
- First and last name
- Institutional affiliation
- City and Country
- Email address
Working group members (if available):
- First and last name
- Institutional affiliation
- City and Country
- Email address
Abstract of Working Group: Please include an up to 250-word abstract outlining the theme or approach your working group will pursue. Please include the following information:
- an articulation of some of the research questions the group is interested in
- the studies/theorists/scholars relevant to the discussion
- proposals may include information such as the national and transnational traditions to be explored, the historical period, specific folklorists and authors, etc.
Activities of the Working Group: Please provide information on the activities in which your group intends to engage. Such activities might include:
- Sharing works in progress
- Reading/watching/listening to relevant texts together, with the intention of gaining more insight into a particular approach, topic, or question
- Working on a group project together for a conference panel or publication
Timeline: Our group plans to meet, i.e., weekly for one month; monthly for six months, bi-monthly for one year …
Modality: i.e., zoom/Teams for 2 hours; in person . . .
At the conclusion of your working group and at each ISFNR congress the coordinator(s) will be invited to write up a summary of the discussions and activities of the working group, no more than 500 words, which will be presented at the congress and included in the ISFNR newsletter and possibly on the ISFNR website.
In addition to presenting a report at the congress, working group coordinators must also write an annual report for the ISFNR Annual Meeting, which will be published once a year in the December newsletter.
Examples of current ISFNR Working Groups can be found at https://isfnr.org/special-committees/working-groups/ and below (pp. 3-4).
Please send your application form to Anne Duggan (a.duggan@wayne.edu) by September 30th 2026.
ISFNR WORKING GROUPS 2025-2026
Environmental and Ecological Narratives
Working Group Coordinators
Lidija Stojanović, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University
Goran Djurdjević, University of Zadar
The working group on Environmental and ecological narratives (EEN) seeks to bridge Folk Narrative Research with environmental concerns, fostering collaboration across disciplines and generations of scholars. By building on the foundational work of folklorists like Lauri Honko, Matti Kamppinen, Åke Hultkrantz, Tok Thompson, and Cristina Bacchilega, our group aims to deepen the understanding of folk narratives through inter- and transdisciplinary lenses. This approach could yield fresh insights into how traditional stories reflect ecological issues and humanistic challenges. We intend to focus on the following areas of research: nature and digital/artificial environments in human psychology; the position of women in various environmental contexts; ecological narratives across cultures and time periods; environmental storytelling and belief systems; econarratives from ideas to materiality.
French and Francophone Fairy Tales and Fluidities
Working Group Coordinators
Anne Duggan, Wayne State University
Fanny Marchaisse, Northwestern University
fannymarchaisse2023@u.northwestern.edu
In the history of French and Francophone fairy tales, there are strong tendencies of gender and other forms of fluidity that challenge gender binaries as well as those underpinning human vs. non-human animals, beings vs. things, nature vs. culture, etc. In the 1690s cross-dressing and other forms of metamorphosis often challenged normative models of gender and sexuality and supported egalitarian relations between women and men; authors of fantastic tales explored queer relations between humans and things within unstable universes, neither fully fictional nor fully realistic. In the nineteenth century, fairy tales were rewritten in ways that often blurred the boundaries between imagined, magical worlds and “real,” historical ones. Our group will explore the many forms of fluidity—between human and non-human, feminine and masculine, the real and the imaginary—found within the French and Francophone fairy-tale traditions.
Heroic Material of Ireland and Scotland
Working Group Coordinators
Síle de Cléir, University of Limerick
sile.decleir@ul.ie
Ailbhe Nic Giolla Chomhaill, University of Galway
Ailbhe.NicGiollaChomhaill@ollscoilnagaillimhe.ie
Our working group will explore hero tales and other heroic narrative material such as songs or lays, in Ireland and Scotland. The heroic story cycles form an important part of Irish and Scottish oral tradition, but because of their importance to the Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages, to date they have mainly been examined in the context of linguistics and Celtic history and archaeology. We propose instead to explore how hero tales and lays can shed light on the dynamic relationship between manuscript and oral traditions, and to look at Irish and Scottish heroic material in its cultural context: this would include a deeper exploration of narrators and their world, and the relationships between the narrated stories and the worldview or life experience of the communities in which they were told.
Short Folklore Forms (SFF)
Working Group Coordinators
Rok Mrvič, Institute of Slovenian Ethnology
rok.mrvic@zrc-sazu.si
Saša Babič, Institute of Slovenian Ethnology
sasa.babic@zrc-sazu.si
The Working Group on Short Folklore Forms (SFF) brings together scholars of folklore to explore a wide range of short folklore forms, with particular attention to the multimodality of their everyday manifestations. The group was established in recognition of the fact that many of these forms do not fit traditional genre categories, leaving them overlooked, underexplored, or misinterpreted within international folkloristic research. Moving beyond the well-studied realms of proverbs, riddles, swearwords, and other relatively well-established genres, the group seeks to investigate short folklore forms, emphasizing that through their diversity and interconnectedness they play a vital role in shaping contemporary vernacular culture and everyday communication. The main objectives of the working group are to highlight the cultural significance of short folklore forms in present-day creativity across various linguistic and cultural contexts, advance their comparative study across genres, foster innovative theoretical and methodological approaches, and work toward conceptual and terminological clarity in international research. The group is open to all researchers, regardless of their specific genre interests, since its scope is not limited to one genre but embraces the full spectrum of short folklore forms.