It’s official folks: legend scholars are coming home to Steel City!

The 40th conference of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) will be held at Sheffield Hallam University, 26-30 June 2023.

The conference is ‘coming home’ because the very first conference, organised by the former Centre for English Cultural Tradition was held at the University of Sheffield in July 1982.

The Perspectives on Contemporary Legend conferences effectively launched the academic study of this new genre of folklore.

Contemporary legend includes the study of all kinds of modern legends, rumours, conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’ that circulate actively in the present or have circulated at an earlier historical period.

The speaker list for the seminal 1982 conference included Jan Brunvand (author of The Vanishing Hitch-hiker), Professor John Widdowson, Paul Smith, Sandy Hobbs, Gillian Bennett and others whose scholarship has become legendary.

The 2023 conference will be organised by SHU’s Centre for Contemporary Legend team that includes Dr David Clarke, Dr Diane A. Rodgers, Andrew Robinson along with friends and collaborators from The Folklore Society.

The seminars and speakers will be based in the new, state-of-the-art multi-media Dorothy Fleming lecture theatre in the Charles Street section of City Campus, five minutes walk from the railway station and Showroom cinema in the heart of the Cultural Industries quarter.

In addition to the series of seminars there will be live music, film screenings and a legend excursion to visit locations in nearby Peak District National Park.

As you can imagine we are all pretty excited about staging this prestigious event in Steel City…so-called because of its adopted patron Vulcan – the Roman and Greek god of fire and forge, whose statue stands upon the tower of the Victorian Town Hall.

Keep watching this space and the ISCLR website and Facebook page for updates including a Call for Papers.