Belief Narrative Network

The Belief Narrative Network (BNN) is a voluntary association and forms part of the ISFNR. There are at present 105 members of the BNN who come from all over the world, and share the common feature that they are all involved in working on belief narratives.

If you are interested in joining the BNN, please contact kishalas.judit@gmail.com for further information about all the activities for the BNN.

Folklore Archives can be found here.

Online Lectures

Belief Narrative Network Online Lecturies Series

BNN Online Lectures: Points and Instructions for Speakers (PDF)

The BNN Committee

The Committee of the BNN is elected for a term of four years at each ISFNR congress. The current members of the Executive Committee (elected at the ISFNR congress in Miami, 2016) are the following: The current members of the Executive Committee (elected at the ISFNR congress in Zagreb, 2021) are the following: Eva Þórdís Ebenzersdóttir, Petr Janeček, Judit Kis-Halas (chair), Kristel Kivari, Kaarina Koski, Mare Kõiva, Margaret Lyngdoh, Bela Mosia, Maria Ines Palleiro, Sonja Petrović, Nemanja Radulović, and Tok Thompson.

Current Call for Papers

None at the moment.

Belief Narrative Network Facebook Page

BNN Facebook Page

Bearing the present situation in mind, the present aim of BNN Facebook account is to gather and share Corona/ Covid folklore of all kinds (jokes, memes, conspiracy theories, “myths” about wonder cures, (personal) experience narratives and so on). Any contextual information, observations (for instance on attitudes towards foreigners on the streets), photos and more will be much appreciated, as will links to other Facebook accounts or relevant web sites dealing with the same topic. As we know, many people all around the world are already collecting such folklore. Our hope is that our Facebook page can become a hub for all this international material, allowing comparison and further research. Everyone will, of course, be welcome to use the data that will hopefully be available here as a form of archival base for their own research. Indeed, it may even become the heart of a future project. Beginning in 2021 or 2022, we anticipate pulling together some of our diverse and global data on this subject in a then-historical view. We encourage members who are researching this to engage on our Facebook page for the purposes of organizing our future response, posting links and the like, and to begin to think and discuss what forms this presentation could take. When present crisis is over (hopefully soon), we hope that the Facebook page can continue to be a site where immediate exchange can take place among the BNN scholars on other subjects.

Recent Publications

2021 Belief Narratives in Folklore Studies: Narrating the Supernatural (ed. Dilip Kumar Kalita)

The publication of papers presented at the BNN conference on Belief Narratives in Folklore Studies: Narrating the Supernatural, which was run by the Anundoram Borooah Institute of Language, Art and Culture in Guwahati and the BNN, and held in Guwahati, Assam, India, on 6-8 February 2019, was published in January 2021.

2015 Nature Spirits: Continuity and Change (Bela Mosia, ed.) (PDF)

2012 Belief Narrative Genres (PDF)

PhD and BA / MA student prize for best student paper in the field of belief narratives

Winner of Student Prize 2020 (PDF)
Winner of Student Prize 2018 (PDF)