Collateral Data Conference
Well-known ethnographic sources tend to present their data explicitly — but valuable cultural information can also be found in less obvious places. This symposium brings together scholars to explore the ethnographic and folkloric material embedded in dictionaries, discussing the unique insights these sources offer through their oblique capture of cultural information, and addressing questions of reliability, scholarly traditions, and methodological integration.
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Collateral Data: Ethnographic Material in Linguistic Dictionaries and Encyclopedia
The two-day Collateral Data symposium (23–24 April, Babelstuen, University of Bergen Library) brings together scholars from across Europe and beyond to explore the rich ethnographic and folkloric material embedded in linguistic dictionaries — sources that were never intended as ethnographic records, yet preserve invaluable traces of belief, custom, and social life. With keynotes by Richard Coates (UWE Bristol) and Angunn Sønnesyn Olsen (University of Bergen), the programme spans a remarkably broad range of topics: from Slavic demonology and Kurdish tribal organisation to Estonian national epics, Armenian fairy tales, and the bawdy folk humour hidden in a nineteenth-century Jutish dialect dictionary. Together, the papers ask how lexicographic sources can be repurposed as windows into the past, and what methodological challenges arise when we treat collateral data as evidence in its own right. Full programme and registration at https://www.uib.no/en/ub/spesial/181882/collateral-data-conference.