From Folklore Collections to Digital Research Infrastructures

At the DARIAH Annual Event 2025 in Göttingen, a collaborative poster is presented by an international team of folklorists and digital humanities scholars, exploring how folklore collections are evolving into digital research infrastructures. The poster highlights the impact of large-scale digitisation, citizen engagement, and computational methods on accessibility, research practices, and cross-border collaboration. It also reflects on the role of emerging AI tools in supporting multilingual integration and the curation of under-resourced cultural heritage.

📍 Poster session: 19 June 2025, 9:30–11:00 | Location: Emmy-Noether Saal, Alte Mensa, Göttingen

📄 View the poster here: download PDF

A selection of featured digital resources mentioned in the poster can be found here: traditionarchives.org/resources/digital-resources

From Folklore Collections to Digital Research Infrastructures: Expanding Access, Engagement, and Analysis

The 16th Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) will take place from 3–6 June 2025, exploring the theme Unwriting. This congress invites scholars to reconsider the authority of inscription in ethnographic work and to engage with decolonial, feminist, and practice-based approaches that challenge dominant narratives. By focusing on "unwriting" as a reflexive and creative act, SIEF2025 opens space for more equitable, collaborative, and multi-sensory forms of knowledge production. 

This year’s SIEF congress brings a strong focus on archives, with eight panels and workshops tackling the theme from a range of fresh and challenging angles.

Arch01 – Sensory archives: exploring the unwritten and unwritable in the archive
Convenors (SIEF WG on Archives): Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, Cliona O'Carroll, Maryna Chernyavska
Date/Time: Thursday 5 June, 09:00–10:45 & 14:15–16:00
Summary: Investigates how sound, image, and material forms capture tacit knowledge beyond written texts. 

Arch02 – Unwriting the museum
Convenors: Johanna Turunen, Mari Viita-aho
Date/Time: Wednesday 4 June, 09:00–10:45, 14:15–16:00, 16:45–18:30
Summary: Challenges hegemonic museum norms by exploring cognitive ruptures, affective engagement, and alternative epistemologies.

Arch03 – Unwriting in/of museums [Face-to-Face-only Workshop]
Convenors: Elizabeth Hallam, Sharon Macdonald
Date/Time: Thursday 5 June, 09:00–10:45 & 14:15–16:00
Summary: A creative workshop examining material and sensory forms of unwriting in a live museum setting.

Arch04 – Cultural institutions in transition
Convenors: Janna oud Ammerveld, Hester Dibbits, Sophie Elpers
Date/Time: Friday 6 June, 09:00–10:45 & 14:30–16:15
Summary: Explores how ethnography supports institutional change and fosters diverse cultural narratives.

Arch05 – Unwritten female histories in the tradition archives
Convenors (SIEF WG on Archives): Kelly Fitzgerald, Niina Hämäläinen
Date/Time: Wednesday 4 June, 09:00–18:30 (3 sessions)
Summary: Uncovers overlooked contributions of women in archives and critiques archival gender bias.

Arch06 – Unwriting craft
Convenors: Anneli Palmsköld, Karin Gustavsson, Johanna Rosenqvist
Date/Time: Tuesday 3 June, 12:30–16:45
Summary: Re-articulates craft as embodied, tacit knowledge, resisting reduction to written form.

Arch07 – Unwriting democracy in museums and archives
Convenors: Charlotte Engman, Olga Zabalueva, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt
Date/Time: Thursday 5 June, 09:00–18:30 (3 sessions)
Summary: Considers how institutions can challenge dominant narratives and reimagine democratic participation.

Arch08 – Old archives + new methods?
Convenors (SIEF WG on Archives): Liina Saarlo, Kati Kallio
Date/Time: Wednesday 4 June, 09:00–18:30 (3 sessions)
Summary: Examines how digital corpora and methods can unwrite archival assumptions and open new research frontiers.

See more: SIEF2025 programme

Tradition Archives Meet Digital Humanities 2nd workshop on March 4, 2025

Folklore archives hold centuries of cultural knowledge – from narratives and songs to beliefs, customs, and everyday practices – now meeting the possibilities (and challenges) of the digital age. This workshop brings together researchers, archivists, and tech experts to explore how digital tools, AI, and community-driven initiatives are transforming the way we collect, preserve, and analyze folklore heritage. From multilingual data linking to the realities of sustaining digital archives beyond short-term projects, we’ll dive into the complexities of rethinking archival practices, leveraging computational methods to enhance access, analysis, and collaboration in the study of folklore archives.

Organized by Sanita Reinsone (University of Latvia), Kyrre Kverndokk (University of Bergen), Kati Kallio (Finnish Literature Society), Fredrik Skott (Institute for Language and Folklore), Mari Väina (Estonian Literary Museum), and Trausti Dagsson (The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies), this workshop is a space for exchanging ideas, sharing hard-won lessons, and mapping where folklore archiving – and the study of folklore collections – is headed next. 

Whether you're knee-deep in digital archives or just curious about the intersection of digital humanities and tradition archives, join our workshop in Tartu (March 4, 2025) or on Zoom. 

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Tradition Archives Meet Digital Humanities

The upcoming 2nd workshop "Tradition Archives Meet Digital Humanities" calls for proposals! It will be held as part of the DHNB2025 conference in Tartu, Estonia, which takes place from March 5–7, 2025. The workshop itself will be scheduled prior to the main conference, with the exact date to be announced after January 8. As a follow-up to the 2018 workshop held at the DHN2018 conference in Helsinki, this workshop aims to provide a meeting space for researchers, archivists, and technology experts engaged in folklore archives, digital cultural heritage, and digital humanities. The primary goal is to foster an interdisciplinary platform for advancing computational folklore (archival) studies through the exchange of insights, identification of challenges, and promotion of innovative practices.

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Archives of Traditional Culture: 100 + 10

International Conference
Riga, Latvia
October 29–31, 2024 

From 29 to 31 October, an international research conference “Archives of Traditional Culture: 100 + 10” will take place in Riga. The conference is one of the events of the 100th anniversary year of the Archives of Latvian Folklore. This academic forum will bring together researchers from different fields of the humanities and social sciences to discuss the past of traditional archives and their future perspectives - the past 100 years and the next 10.

The conference is organized by the Archives of Latvian Folklore, ILFA UL, in cooperation with the SIEF Working Group on Archives and the SIEF Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property as well as in collaboration with Riga City Council. The conference will feature altogether 35 presentations by scholars from 18 countries. The authors of the plenary lectures are Maryna Chernyavska from Canada and Sanita Reinsone from Latvia, ILFA UL.

The conference will also be available to everyone via streaming at https://www.facebook.com/lulfmi and https://www.youtube.com/@LFK1924.

Conference Programme (PDF)

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SAMLA.no and the way forward for digital tradition archives in Europe

Bergen, Norway
October 27, 2024 

In connection with the launch of the Norwegian digital tradition archive SAMLA.no, a one-day international seminar is organized to celebrate the occasion. The goal of the seminar is to create a forum for engaging discussions on international collaboration and to explore the next steps for preserving cultural heritage in the digital age. The seminar is open to all who are interested in the intersection of technology and cultural preservation.

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Archives of Traditional Culture: 100 + 10

International Conference
Riga, Latvia
October 29-31, 2024 

Call for papers 

Approaching its 100th anniversary, the Archives of Latvian Folklore (1924), in close cooperation with the SIEF Working Group on Archives and the SIEF Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property, invites contributions for an international conference addressing a diverse range of issues related to present and future of the archives of traditional culture. The centenary is, of course, a good reason to look back and take stock of what has been done, to understand how the histories of archiving have developed in different countries. But what we would like to do even more at this conference is to assess current situations and to look ahead, say, to the next 10 years. Read more