CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Folklore and the Natural World' The Folklore Society’s Annual Conference 2027

Date 11 June 2027 - 13 June 2027

Location Shropshire Wildlife Trust, 193 Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury. SY2 6AH

Our relationship with the natural world is central to our understanding of ourselves, our lives, and our future. We negotiate that relationship partly by the stories we tell, the folklore we share, consciously or unconsciously, about nature; what we believe about our environment and the living beings populating it. Throughout human history, our perception of our own place in nature has had a profound influence. Religions may tell us that we have a responsibility to creation; survival requires that we control and exploit other parts of that creation. Our vulnerability to natural danger is in tension with the damage we cause, individually and collectively, to other animals, plants, and their environments.

Vernacular knowledge shared with contemporaries or passed down from earlier generations affects how we farm, what we eat and how we treat other animals, but as we become more remote from nature in modern cities and industrial landscapes, our responses change, and our use of nature to revitalise community can be driven by agendas which are alien to the old world. Just as proverbs, fables and bestiaries use imaginary animals to model real human behaviour, so the selection of living things for cultural significance is made at a remove from the actual ecosystem. 

Our venue is the headquarters of the Shropshire Wildlife Trust, a thirteenth-century building with a flourishing wildlife garden.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Papers of 20 minutes are invited on any topic relating to our engagement with nature through folklore. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

•                 The role of nature in folk custom and narrative

•                 Ethology versus legend

•                 Communication with and within the natural world

•                 Personification of nature and associated ritual, traditional or invented

•                 Seasonality and timelessness

•                 The native and the exotic: nationalism in nature

•                 Health and foodways

Please send your proposal to folkloresocietyconference@gmail.com remembering to include:

1) a title and abstract of your 20-minute presentation (200 words max)

2) a brief biographical note (200 words max)

3) whether you wish to present remotely or in person. Remote presentations will be recorded, not live, and presenters must deliver recordings by 1 June 2027 at the latest.

Deadline for proposals: Sunday 13 December 2026 (12 midnight GMT)

Image credit:  Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch, Wikimedia Commons