ERC project DEAGENCY and the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, invite you to the 15th international conference Young Folklorists (YoFo), entitled “Transcending Boundaries, Connecting Worlds”, which will take place from 1 to 3 October 2026 at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Zavetiška ulica 5, Ljubljana. The internationally recognised conference, which will be held in Slovenia for the first time, represents an important platform for networking, knowledge exchange, and the presentation of the latest research by students, early-career researchers, and established scholars in the fields of folkloristics, ethnology, and anthropology.
The conference will focus on contemporary theoretical approaches in the social sciences and humanities that challenge established Western divisions, such as nature and culture, body and mind, reason and emotion, and life and death. Discussions will explore approaches including embodiment, affect, posthumanism, and new materialism, which emphasise relations, lived experience, and the agency of both human and non-human actors. Particular attention will be given to relationships between the living and the dead, and to the ways in which ancestral, guardian, and spiritual presences transform understandings of the boundaries between presence and absence, subject and object, and life and death.
The three-day conference will feature keynote lectures by distinguished scholars from Slovenia and abroad: Prof. Dr. Tok Thompson (University of Southern California, USA), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kaarina Koski (University of Turku, Finland), and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jaka Repič (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).
The conference panels will be held in person and in English, while the keynote lectures will also be available online.
Programme and Book of Abstracts
Access the Programme and Book of Abstracts
YoFo keynote lectures on Zoom
The YoFo keynote lectures will be streamed live on Zoom according to the following schedule:
Day 1: 1 October 2026, 14:30–15:30
Tok Thompson: “A Posthuman’s Progress: Adapting to De-centered Agency”
Day 2: 2 October 2026, 9:00–10:00
Kaarina Koski: “Belief Tradition in Social Media: Knowledge, Entertainment, and Affect”
Day 3: 3 October 2026, 9:00–10:00
Jaka Repič: “The Forensic Turn in Research of Mass Graves: Materiality, Agency and the Political Life of Human Remains”
Always the same Zoom link: https://uni-lj-si.zoom.us/j/94661830462
You are warmly invited!
