The SHU NFS Team – Dr David Clarke, Dr Diane Rodgers and Dr Sophie Parks-Nield
On Wednesday 5 February 2025, Sheffield Hallam based members of the project team along with other members of CCL invited university colleagues to help launch the National Folklore Survey for England.
It was standing room only as staff and students from the across the university gathered to hear our presentation and, most importantly, enjoy home-baked brownies and prosecco.
The launch proved a chance for the team to offer more information about the project, detailing its aims, scope, parameters and methodologies, and take questions. We were delighted at the enthusiasm with which our project was received, and we look forward to sharing more about the Survey as we progress.
On Saturday 11th May 2024 CCL members Dr David Clarke and Andrew Robinson hosted an event at the Centre for Folklore, Myth and Magic in Todmorden to a sold-out audience of over 50 people where they introduced who their research into visual representations and public perceptions of UFOs and UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena).
Dr David Clarke (R) and Andrew Robinson (L) outside the Folklore Centre
The research, titled ‘In The Eye Of The Beholder’ explores the role of images in the creation of folkloric narratives and visual rumour legends through the sharing of the complex and intertwining narratives that surround reports of UAPs and UFOs. As part of the event attendees took part in a drawing exercise providing the researchers with more than 40 different visualisations of UFOs for use in their creation of a taxonomy of UFOs as part of their study which will ultimately lead to research publications, exhibitions and further public engagement.
Images produced by participants at the event including work by Kate Lyall (centre top), Britta (top right), and Paul Weatherhead (bottom right).
As part of their presentation Senior Lecturer in Photography Andrew Robinson introduced a number of photographs that were used to provide evidence of classic U.K. sightings of UFOs but have since been shown to have been staged. This was accompanied with a demonstration of how this might have been achieved resulting in a mass sighting of UFOs within the venue (pictured above).
To accompany the talk Andrew also curated an exhibition of photographs and artefacts from his and David’s personal archives of UFO imagery and artefacts alongside with facsimile copies of previously top secret Ministry of Defence documents now available from the National Archives.
The research project will continue with a virtual presentation at ‘In The Cloud of Unknowing: Encounters with UFOs’ being hosted at Midred’s Lane Arts Complex in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania in July of this year (more details here) and a further participatory even at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies in London in November.
Moving a conference online is no mean feat: will the technology work? Will everyone feel engaged when they can’t make direct eye contact or network over finger food? How will Chairs and Speakers enliven the stilted atmosphere of the online world?
With Earth(ly) Matters 2020, Sheffield Hallam’s Humanities and Social Sciences Society have made it look fiendishly easy. Using the three thematic strands of the conference to organise presentations, Roots, Rebellions and Resolutions, Earth(ly) Matters was split over three Fridays in August to prevent Zoom fatigue and to enable attendance from anyone, anywhere.
The conference explored ‘what matters on Earth and how Earth matters’, taking Amitav Ghosh’s claim, that the current environmental crisis is ‘also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination’, as provocation. What role, speakers were asked, can the humanities and social sciences play at a time of climate breakdown and a catastrophic decline in wildlife?
On Friday 7 August, under the banner of ‘Roots’, I was fortunate to be able to present my work on calendar customs and their link to the natural environment, exploring whether those involved in such calendar customs could become climate activists on a hyperlocal level. Presenters submitted a ‘verbal’ element (a written paper) and a ‘visual’ element (a recorded presentation with visual stimuli) for publication on the conference website to enable engagement beyond the ten-minute live talk on conference day.
Inspiring change remained at the heart of the day: how our work, actions, thoughts and ideas can contribute to a world where change is underway, and change is desperately needed. But there was also fun to be had. Once the conference came to a close, delegates were invited to try bingo – with a difference. Using the Zoom breakout room facility, we learnt more about the lives and research interests of our fellow delegates by collecting information on bingo cards. Finding someone that shares your preferred type of cooked potato has never been so urgent…
Sophie Parkes
You can visit the Earth(ly) Matters conference website HERE and view Sophie’s presentation of her paper Cheese-rolling, Pace-egging, Soul-caking: Can Calendar Customs Engender Stewardship of our Natural Environment below. Sophie would welcome any feedback you might have – contact her at: sophie@sophieparkes.co.uk
Centre For Contemporary Legend 