Welcoming our new Postdoctoral Researcher

We are delighted to welcome Dr Sophie Parkes-Nield as our new Postdoctoral Researcher on the National Folklore Survey for England project.

Sophie recently gained her doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University in creative writing and folklore where she explored how contemporary novels and novelists represent the calendar custom in England. We caught up with her to learn more about her research and interests.

Hello Sophie! We’re looking forward to working with you. What was it about the National Folklore Survey for England project that inspired you to apply?

I finished my PhD in September and was teaching a course for short fiction publisher, Comma Press, on ‘writing fiction with folklore’. The National Folklore Survey for England project sounded perfect as I could combine my fascination for English folklore, specifically calendar custom, with the skills I had honed in marketing and communications in the fifteen years I had worked in the industry prior to my return to full-time academia in 2019. It’s the perfect time to conduct a survey such as this, it’s much needed, and I feel so lucky to be able to work on it.

Why do you think a survey is ‘much needed’?

Folklore seems to be everywhere at the moment: on the television, in films and novel; folklore-based podcasts are exploding. Most excitingly, to my mind, artists and practitioners are looking at how or what aspects of folklore are being used, and whose folklore is being included and excluded. Yet we don’t have a sound idea of how and what folklore resonates with people living in England today. We don’t know what ‘folklore’ means to them. What excites me about this project is the potential for a dataset that can be used as a benchmark, or a marker to predict beliefs and behaviours, that we can share with anyone - with everyone!

When did you become interested in folklore?

I first ‘discovered’ English folk and traditional music when I was a teenager, and as my love for the music grew, I began to take more of an interest in folklore and the wider folk arts. I grew up in North Oxfordshire where there is a strong, proud Cotswold morris dancing tradition which I slowly learnt to love - to the bemusement of friends and family - but I have only very recently (late last year) become a morris dancer myself, albeit in the North West tradition, where I now live. Folklore is such a vast subject which is obviously, necessarily, evolving and mutating, and I am constantly reminded how little I know. I’m hoping immersing myself in the National Folklore Survey will remedy that, a little!

Finally, what aspect of the project are you most looking forward to?

It sounds strange, but testing the survey with focus groups. I love that moment in a focus group - or any kind of discussion group - when your perception shifts and you see something in a wholly different way, that gives your project or idea a whole new thread or angle. It always leads to more work, of course, but it’ll be for the better.

Thanks, Sophie. If you would like to know more about Sophie, her research and her writing, you can visit her website here.