SIEF Series in Ethnology and Folklore

Hande Birkalan-Gedik and Anthony Bak Buccitelli announce the creation of the new SIEF Series in Ethnology and Folklore. New Directions in the Study of Everyday Life, Past and Present with Berghahn Books, and also introduce the international editorial board of the series.

New Directions in the Study of Everyday Life, Past and Present (with Berghahn Books in 2024)

Although distinct in their historical formations, the fields of ethnology and folklore share a central concern with the cultural and historical study of everyday life. Co-editors Hande Birkalan-Gedik and Anthony Bak Buccitelli are pleased to announce the creation of a new series with Berghahn Books that will publish works from both fields focused on the study of everyday life, past and present.

Supported by an international editorial board comprised of ethnologists and folklorists at leading institutions around the world, this “new directions” series will focus on publishing works that either push the intellectual boundaries in the contemporary or historical study of the everyday, broadly defined, or addresses everyday issues of pressing concern around the world.

This rigorously peer reviewed series will include both monographs and edited volumes.

We will be launching our Series at the SIEF Conference in Aberdeen and planning a meeting with the Working Group Conveners.

For further information regarding the series or contact the editors by email at: <birkalan-gedik@em.uni-frankfurt.de> and <abb20@psu.edu>

To submit a proposal, please send it to <editorialus@berghahnbooks.com> >

Co-editors: Hande Birkalan-Gedik (Goethe University, Germany) and Anthony Bak Buccitelli (Pennsylvania State University, USA).

Editorial board (in alphabetical order):

Marcin Brocki (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Peter Jan Margry (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Solimar Otero (Indiana University, USA)
David Shankland (Royal Anthropological Institute, UK)
Ju Xi (Beijing Normal University, People’s Republic of China)

Co-editors

Hande Birkalan-Gedik studied at Indiana University and worked as professor of folklore, cultural anthropology and gender studies in Istanbul. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Her most recent co-edited book, Fabrics of Anthropological Knowledge: Changing Perspectives in Europe and Beyond will be published with Berghahn (2025).

Anthony Bak Buccitelli is Interim Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs at the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg. His books include City of Neighborhoods: Memory, Folklore, and Ethnic Place in Boston, Race and Ethnicity in Digital Culture: Our Changing Traditions, Impressions, and Expressions in a Mediated World, and Emerging Perspectives in the Study of Folklore and Performance (co-edited with Solimar Otero).

Editorial Board (in alphabetical order)

Marcin Brocki is a professor at Jagiellonian University, specializing in theory and history of anthropology, and semiotics. His research includes post-socialism and community studies, with fieldwork in Poland and Zimbabwe. He has held several academic leadership positions and served as editor-in-chief of the Jagielllonian Studies in Cultural Anthropology book series.

Peter Jan Margry is Professor emeritus of European Ethnology at the University of Amsterdam and senior fellow at the Meertens Institute, a research center of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. He has a research focus on religious cultures, pilgrimage, rituals, alternative healing, traditions and heritage.

Solimar Otero is Professor of Folklore and Gender Studies at Indiana University. She is the author of Archives of Conjure: Stories of the Dead in Afrolatinx Cultures (Columbia University Press 2020), which won the 2021 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions. She is also the Editor of the Journal of Folklore Research.

David Shankland is Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute. A social anthropologist by training, he has long been interested in Turkey where he has conducted fieldwork amongst the Alevi community, and also been a member of the Catalhöyük dig team, where he looked at the local villagers’ understanding of the distant past. He has additionally written widely on the history of anthropology, concentrating in particular on the emergence of social anthropology as a distinct discipline.

Ju Xi, professor in School of Sociology of Beijing Normal University, is an ethnologist of Chinese folklore and popular religion. Upon her Ph.D. in Folklore Studies in Beijing Normal University, she pursued her post-doctoral research at EFEO and EHESS in France. Her current research concentrates on the daily life and religious activities in Beijing.