TEAM | Centre For Contemporary Legend

Meet the Team :

The CCL Team (L-R Andrew, David, Diane and Sophie) celebrating Sophie’s successful defence of her PhD Thesis in September 2024.

Dr. David Clarke – Assocate Professor & Principal Lecturer in Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University

David is one of Britain’s leading authorities on folklore and contemporary legend. He is Project Lead for the AHRC-funded National Folklore Survey for England and from 2008-13 acted as consultant for The National Archives during the release of the Ministry of Defence’s archive on UFOs (often referred to as ‘Britain’s Real X-Files’). He is an experienced journalist and broadcaster and has appeared in and acted as consultant for numerous radio and television programmes including BBC Timewatch and Netflix Encounters. He is the author of seven books including The Angels of Mons (2004), How UFOs Conquered the World (2015), UFO Drawings from The National Archives (2017) and Space Age Folklore (forthcoming 2026).

Dr Clarke’s undergraduate degree was in Archaeology and Medieval History and his PhD in Folklore was completed in 1999 at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language (NATCECT), School of English, University of Sheffield, in 1999. In 2018 he co-founded the Centre for Contemporary Legend research group at Sheffield Hallam University with Dr Diane Rodgers and Andrew Robinson. He is a member of The Folklore Society and represents Europe on the council of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR).

Visit David’s Web site HERE | Substack HERE

Dr Diane A. Rodgers – Senior Lecturer in Media at Sheffield Hallam University

Diane has published widely on the communication of folklore in film and television, including articles ‘Something Wyrd This Way Comes’ (2019), ‘Monstrous Megaliths’ (2025) and book chapters in the Routledge Companion to Folk Horror (2024), Folk Horror on Film (2024) and Nigel Kneale and Horror (2025). She co-edited The Legacy of The X-Files (2023) and is currently working on her monograph Wyrd TV: Folklore, Folk Horror and Television, for BFI Publishing.

Diane’s research interests relate to the communication of folklore and contemporary legend in all types of media and has appeared as commentator in documentaries like The Last Sacrifice (2024), on All The Haunts Be Ours extras (DVD collection) and provided commentary for the BFI’s 2024 Blu-ray release of The Outcasts. She has spoken at international public events including the Glasgow Film Festival and the Offscreen Film Festival in Brussels. Alongside teaching and research, Diane is president-elect of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) and co-investigator on AHRC projects Dracula Returns to Derby and the CCL National Folklore Survey for England.

Visit Diane’s website HERE

Andrew Robinson – Senior Lecturer in Photography at Sheffield Hallam University

Andrew Robinson is a photographer, artist, and senior lecturer in photography at Sheffield Hallam University, where he co-founded the Centre for Contemporary Legend (CCL) with Dr David Clarke and Dr Diane Rodgers. His art practice investigates expressions of identity and material culture through a visual anthropology of people, place, and trace, applying creative strategies that integrate still and moving imagery with text, audio, and found materials.

Research interests include: the visual representation of vernacular English custom and tradition; the folklore, myth and legend associated with photographs and photographers; and photography in print and archive. Recent outputs have explored subjects as diverse as the Photography of the Crimean War; Lover’s Leap Legends; English Calendar Customs; A.I Generated Imagery, and the Calvine UFO.

Recent publications include: chapters in a Contemporary Legend Special Edition of ‘The Revenant’ online journal due Spring 2025; ‘Behind the Mask: Vernacular Culture in the Time of COVID’ (Utah State University Press, 2023) and ‘Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland’, (Routledge 2021) along withpapers presented at ‘Off The Shelf Literary Festival’ (Nov 23) ‘AI and Photography’ Royal Photographic Society (Oct 2023); ‘International Society of Contemporary Legend Research Annual Conference’ (June 2023). He is the founder and curator of the photo book website ‘photobibliophile’.

Visit Andrew’s website HERE | Substack: HERE | Linktree: HERE

Dr Sophie Parkes-Nield – Postdoctoral Researcher, National Folklore Survey of England, Sheffield Hallam University

Sophie Parkes-Nield is a morris dancer, a researcher in folkloristics and, writing as Sophie Parkes, a writer of novels, short fiction, life writing, and music journalism. She completed a PhD in creative writing and folklore at Sheffield Hallam University in 2024 with a practice-based thesis in which she interrogated the representation of the calendar custom in the contemporary novel.

Sophie is an Associate Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University and Leeds Arts University, teaching on both BA and MA Creative Writing programmes, and is also a frequent facilitator of creative writing workshops in the community. Sophie is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher on the CCL National Folklore Survey for England.

Visit Sophie’s’s website HERE

Andrew, David and Diane at the inaugral CCL symposium in November 2018 | Sophie and Diane at the three day Folklore on Film International Conference in September 2019 – both at Sheffield Hallam University.

EMAIL – centre.contemporary.legend@gmail.com