Call for applications: Folklore Fellows' Summer School 2015: Doing Folkloristics in the Digital Age

FOLKLORE FELLOWS' SUMMER SCHOOL 2015: DOING FOLKLORISTICS IN THE DIGITAL AGE, UNIVERSITY OF TURKU, FINLAND, 11-18 JUNE, 2015
The call for applications for the next Folklore Fellows' Summer School to be held at Turku University’s research station on the island of Seili, 11–18 June 2015 is now open. The theme of the international summer school, the ninth to be organised in Finland, is investigation of the Internet and digital culture from a folkloristics perspective. The keynote speakers include Anneli Baran, Trevor J. Blank, Lauri Harvilahti, Robert Glenn Howard, Timothy Lloyd, Lynne S. McNeill, and Jaakko Suominen. 
Over the last couple of decades the Internet has become a central part of our everyday activity and social reality. We carry out work, we seek out information and we spend our free time either alone or communally by turning to the Internet. The Internet has powerfully moulded the ways a ! sense of belonging to a community and identity formation take place in modern society. It has given rise to partially or wholly virtual subcultures which have formed around various focuses of interest, whose members may be located absolutely anywhere. Family historians, fans, neo-pagans or health-seekers dwelling in different parts of the world can meet activists campaigning for or against various matters on the net, both social agents and chance participants. The everyday communication of these groups and the folklore they produce are influenced by local cultural traditions and models of communication, but are moulded too by the conditions of the digital contexts and technical approaches. They move naturally between digital and real worlds. Through social media, users of the Internet have changed from information seekers and users to producers of information and participants in it, and the boundary between amateur and professional activity has grown indistinct. The interaction betwe! en production and the public is a central concern of folkloristics, and the Internet has made this more discernible than hitherto. Digital folkloristics makes widespread use of materials gained from the media or otherwise generally known, and also borrows materials from commercially produced culture. Typical too is the characteristic merging of the products of commerce, popular culture and the media with folklore.
What form are the objects of folkloristic research and the questions it poses adopting in a digital age? How have cultural and social changes affected folkloristic methodology, and especially the questions that folklore seeks to pose? What are the objects of folkloristic research like in the context of the Internet, where social and professional boundaries are weak? What identities are built up on the Internet? What facilities does folkloristics have recourse to, when everyday communication has shifted from the oral to the digital? How does folklore arising digi! tally fit in with our earlier conceptions of cultural tradition and its protection? What means are archives and other storage centres for memorabilia to use to carry out their recording and cataloguing work on the Internet?
The programme of the summer school consists of five themes: Online communities and creativity; Authorship and popular culture; New heritage and curation; The Internet as a field for folkloristics; and Digital archives, interoperability and common practices. Each theme will occupy one day, with two plenum lectures and participants’ introductions and discussions.
The summer school is targeted primarily to doctoral students, but postdocs and other researchers are also welcome to attend. The participant quota for the summer school is 20; there will be 10 tutors in all. The language of the summer school is English. The school is open for applications from June 2 to September 30, 2014. All applications are to be sent online using the form publis! hed on the calls' website. Participants will be selected on the basis of their application, and applicants will be informed of their acceptance by 30 November 2014.
The participation fee is 500 euros, which covers tuition, accommodation and full board for the period of the school, as well as journeys between Turku city and the Seili research station. Unfortunately Folklore Fellows cannot subsidize fees, and therefore encourages applicants to seek out other sources of funding and will provide letters of recommendation for those accepted to the summer school.
Further information:
Professor Pekka Hakamies                                 Secretary general Anne Heimo
University of Turku                                               University of Turku
pekhak@utu.fi                       !                                 anheimo@utu.fi
Call for applications: http://www.folklorefellows.fi/?page_id=2648
FF Summer School: http://www.folklorefellows.fi/?page_id=8

Folklore Fellows': http://www.folklorefellows.fi/