17-18 September 2026, University of Helsinki, Finland

In an era defined by overlapping social, political, and ecological crises, museums are faced with new dilemmas that call them to re-think their societal role and agency, both in the past and in the present. Therefore, tools for emotional sustainability are needed.

This conference invites you to thought-provoking discussions and presentations on how museums can address affective polarization, strengthen individual and collective resilience, navigate the emotional labour of museum professionals, and to reflect on the broader societal impact of emotional sustainability. The invited keynote speakers for the conference will be professor Angela Failler and Marzia Varutti, PhD.

The language of the conference is English.

Important days:

• The deadline for submissions of abstracts: April 30, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: June, 2026
• The programme will be released: June, 2026
• Registration opens: June, 2026
  

Call for papers:

Societies today are confronted by many sociopolitical and ecological challenges ranging from climate change to intertwined forms of oppression and sociocultural upheaval. In such a time of polycrisis, museums are faced with new dilemmas that call them to re-think their societal role and agency, both in the past and in the present.  Therefore, tools for emotional sustainability are needed. Emotional sustainability is a dimension of social sustainability, and it refers to the capacity to maintain and support emotional well-being within social environments. It involves the ability to recognize and manage emotions to foster healthier, more resilient individuals and communities.

Museums of varied kinds can play a central role in emotional sustainability both on an individual, professional, and societal level. By engaging in public debates, museums and different associated actors, such as audiences, artists, and varied communities, can build collective spaces and affective affordances for emotional sustainability. Through their exhibitions and other activities museums seek to act as counter forces against affective polarization, thereby potentially supporting more resilient societies. On the other hand, historically they have and still can increase polarization and produce societal ill-being, especially for minorities.

Emotional sustainability is also connected to issues within the museum institutions, and to the museum professionals’ capabilities for navigating the affective demands of their work and for employing emotional labour to cope with challenging situations. Museum professionals may experience ethical and affective strains when dealing with their institutions contested histories and emotional legacies, when caring for the collections is inadequate due to limited resources, or when their personal values conflict with the museum’s policies or realities.

Find the full call for papers here

Esitelmäkutsu: Perinteentutkimuksen päivät 2026

Ensi kertaa järjestettävät Perinteentutkimuksen päivät kokoaa yhteen alan piirissä toimivia tutkijoita keskustelemaan alan ajankohtaisista asioista. Tapahtuman tarkoituksena on edistää vuorovaikutusta folkloristiikan ja perinteentutkimuksen sekä esimerkiksi kulttuuriperinnön, kansanmusiikin ja muistitietotutkimuksen eri vaiheiden tutkijoiden ja opiskelijoiden kesken. Perinteentutkimuksen päivien ohjelmassa on kutsuttujen puhujien paneelikeskustelu ja esitelmiä. Tapahtuman järjestää Suomen Kansantietouden Tutkijain Seura (SKTS).

Ensimmäiset Perinteentutkimuksen päivät pidetään Helsingissä Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran tiloissa 12.–13.11.2026. Päivillä ei ole erityistä teemaa, vaan toivotamme kaikki alan tutkijat lämpimästi tervetulleeksi ehdottamaan omaa aihettaan. Lähetä noin 250 sanan esitelmä- tai paneeliehdotuksesi viimeistään sunnuntaina 24.5.2026 lomakkeella tämän linkin kautta: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/mb1JgQcTj5

Perinteentutkimuksen päivien 2026 osallistumismaksu on SKTS:n jäsenille 40 €, opiskelijoille, eläkeläisille ja työttömille 10 € sekä muille 60 €. Osallistumismaksuilla katetaan puhuja- ja kahvituskustannuksia.

Perinteentutkimuksen päivät 12.–13.11.2026, SKS:n juhlasali, Helsinki
Esitelmäehdotusten DL 24.5.2026
Esitelmäehdotusten hyväksymisistä tiedotetaan 30.6.2026 mennessä.
Lisätiedot: www.kansantietoudentutkijat.fi/toimintaa/perinteentutkimuksen-paivat/

Ystävällisin terveisin
järjestelytoimikunta

Viliina Silvonen, SKTS johtokunta, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Itä-Suomen yliopisto
Tuukka Karlsson, Helsingin yliopisto
Heidi Henriikka Mäkelä, SKTS esimies, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Sibelius-Akatemia
Karina Lukin, Helsingin yliopisto
Sonja Mutanen, SKTS johtokunta, Itä-Suomen yliopisto

The 15th International Conference of Young Folklorists will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, October 1–3, 2026.

The theme of the conference is:

TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES
CONNECTING WORLDS

The keynote speakers are assoc. prof. dr. Kaarina Koski, University of Turku, assoc. prof. dr. Tok Thompson, University of Southern California, and assoc. prof. dr. Jaka Repič, University of Ljubljana.

Please submit an abstract of up to 250 words via the Registration Form by 28 February 2026. Notifications of acceptance or rejection will be sent out by March 20, 2026.

There is no conference fee, but participants are expected to cover their travel and accommodation expenses. This is an in-person conference, a hybrid or virtual participation is not possible. Each speaker will be allotted 20 minutes to present, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. The working language of the conference is English.

Read more here

CALL FOR PAPERS – ‘Folklore on the Move’
The Folklore Society’s Annual Conference 2026, in collaboration with the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen.
In-person conference: Friday, 5 June to Sunday, 7 June 2026, at the King’s College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
Online conference day: Wednesday, 10 June 2026.

The vitality of folklore depends on the movement of people and/or ideas. Some forms of folklore can be defined directly through their relations to movement, whether practically – e.g. certain cultural forms of Roma and Traveller communities, migrants, showpeople, sailors, etc. – or performed, e.g. tales of years-long quests, ballads of departure, or myths whose characters move between supernatural and physical realms. We can also consider the movement of individual items: a lullaby moves intimately from one generation to another; an online meme is sent to thousands via social media; a tag is spray-painted across a city; dance steps are called from the stage as partners and groups move around the floor.

The movement of disciplinary ideas and methodologies and how these have shaped Folklore and adjacent fields is worthy of contemplation, as well. More specifically, the connection between folklore and movement has interested folklorists going back at least to Julius Krohn’s historic-geographic method, which attempted to track the movement of folklore across place and time. Later, Reidar Christiansen pointed to the migratory nature of legends, while Carl von Sydow reminded us of the cultural changes that folklore undergoes as it moves, and Linda Dégh considered the ‘conduits’ of interest that are necessary for the sharing of folklore.

At a time when folklore and related symbols have been co-opted by some to delineate stringent identity boundaries, the Elphinstone Institute and The Folklore Society are pleased to work together to highlight the movement of folklore and the interconnectedness of people. This is not to imply that all folklore is benevolent, nor to neglect the movement inherent to the discipline’s problematic colonial histories. We hope to encourage nuanced discussions of folklore and movement through a variety of lenses and from a wide range of participants.

We welcome academic and non-academic presentations of 20 minutes from tradition bearers, archivists, activists, museum workers, artists, event co-ordinators, folklorists and others interested in speaking on contemporary or historical aspects of ‘folklore on the move’.

Deadline for proposals: Sunday, 14 December 2025.

Read more here

The ISFNR Interim conference in 2026 will be held in Reykjavík Iceland, June 13th to 16th. The conference will take place at the main campus of the University of Iceland, a walking distance from the vibrant city centre of Reykjavík. With nearly 24 hours of daylight,and plenty of geothermal pools to soak in, it’s the perfect place to recharge on all levels. The conference is hosted by the department of Folkloristics at the University of Iceland, the Icelandic Association of Ethnology and Folklore and The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. This will be a hybrid event, so delegates will be able to participate either virtually or in person.

Theme

The conference engages broadly with the theme of nature(s) in narrative. We ask how narrative is entangled with nature in its various forms, situated in the micro and macro, the rural and urban, ranging from essentialist notions of the natural, the supernatural to non-binary assemblages of nature-culture. Subjects for discussion might include the following:

• How do notions of nature relate to narrations of identity, heritage, the national and personal, the physical and the spiritual?
• What comprehensions of “the natural” can be gleaned from storytelling, in its various cultural and social contexts, and in folk narrative research itself?
• How has our narrative vocabulary and academic terminology borrowed from and conversed with the discourses of nature?
• Does folk narrative entail a commons of sorts?
• How do environment and disparate nature-cultural assemblages shape narrative, characters, flow, style and storytelling events?
• How are human and non-human entanglements expressed, sensed, performed and reimagined in storytelling events?
• How do narrators delineate “selves” from “the other” in the living world; the natural from the “unnatural” or supernatural; the mundane from the enchanted?
• How are our conceptions of nature shaped and challenged by unusual “natural events” and climate crises, or urbanisation, technology, information disorder (fake news) and artificial intelligence?
• What are the “natures” of archives and how are they shaped by narratives?
• Do natures in narrative reveal aspects of the “natures” of narrative, its forms, functions and practice?

Call for Papers and Posters can be found here

Proposals must consist of:

• a paper title
• names and email addresses of any authors/co-authors
• a short abstract of fewer than 300 characters
• long abstract of fewer than 250 words

The call is open 20 Aug – 01 Oct 2025

LiU Humanities welcome scholars and students of all disciplines to this conference on the contribution of qualitative, interpretative, collaborative and critical research to the ways in which we know of and with culture, society, technology, medicine and nature in different strands of research.

Date: 16-17 October 2025
Location: Arbetets museum, Norrköping
Deadline for papers: New extended deadline 10 April 2025

Call for papers
While traditional humanities disciplines and topics have become deeper and broader over the years, they have also been enriched by interdisciplinary, integrative or new humanities that cut across disciplines and problem-based themes such as the LiU Department of Thematic Studies. But despite the nowadays diverse, adaptive, and rich humanities, there seems to be a recurring debate on the value of the humanities not the least in relation to the distribution of funding for research and education. There is, hence, an imperative need for a comprehensive discussion of the role, nature and place of the humanities in academia and in society at large.

This conference aims at showing the power of various humanities by displaying research initiatives that provide the crucial social, cultural, existential, ethical, philosophical, and political dimensions of how human life is entangled with history, language, interaction, science, nature and technologies.

Scholars within all fields that identify with, or wish to pursue collaboration with, qualitative, interpretative and critical research are invited to present ongoing or planned initiatives.

Read more here