Folklore Matters

Welcome back to Folklore Matters! We're delighted to be bringing you more compelling interviews with people working with folklore in myriad ways, from academic research to popular culture. To kick off series two, we meet Dave Brewis, a filmmaker with over two decades of experience in filming calendar customs in the UK and in France. His recent series, Gatherings, examines six UK customs in detail....

Now that our first ever series of Folklore Matters is out there, hosts and researchers, Diane Rodgers and Sophie Parkes-Nield, give a quick overview of their favourite moments.

Professor Helen Wheatley is a legendary television scholar who has published seminal books, such as Gothic Television , the award-winning Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure , and more recently Television/Death , a study of death, bereavement and dying on television. In this episode of Folklore Matters - the final episode of series one - Helen joins Diane Rodgers in the studio to...

Folklore is massive on social media, and around May Day and Halloween, you may have seen films and photographs of people dancing on their own or in small groups to celebrate seasonal change. If so, it may have been at the instigation of artist and activist, Lucy Wright, our guest in this latest episode of Folklore Matters. Lucy is a prolific polymath: academic, musician, artist, and writer. In thi...

This special episode of Folklore Matters is a recording of a live event at Off The Shelf 2025, at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield . Part of the National Folklore Survey for England team, Professor Owen Davies and Dr Ceri Houlbrook published a groundbreaking book in 2025, entitled Folklore: a journey through the past and present . This episode presents Owen and Ceri live in conversation with Da...

Contemporary discussions of folklore soon arrive at cult film The Wicker Man . In this episode of Folklore Matters, David, Sophie and Diane meet Dominic Hardy, son of Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man , to learn about the film's lasting cultural legacy, but also the film's impact on Dominic's family. Dominic, with his brother, Justin, produced a film and recently published a book, both entit...

It's time to catch up with another Sheffield Hallam colleague, this time photographer, folklore researcher and lecturer, Andrew Robinson. Andrew’s fascinated by the visual representation of custom and tradition in England, along with the folklore, myth and legend associated with photographs and photographers. He's recently been working with David on the Calvine UFO - more in this episode - and has...

The profile of folklore in England has never seemed bigger. In Folklore Matters, folklore researchers, David Clarke, Sophie Parkes-Nield, and Diane Rodgers, want to find out more about people’s interests in the folklore of the country, how they’re working with it, collecting or documenting it. This introductory episode sets out what listeners can expect from Folklore Matters, and a little more abo...

Richard Bradley is a librarian at Sheffield Hallam University, where Folklore Matters hosts, David Clarke, Sophie Parkes-Nield, and Diane Rodgers, are based. But in the world of folklore, Richard is known as 'Weird Derbyshire' and has been researching, attending and documenting the folklore and customs of Derbyshire for the past decade. He's published four local history books including 'Secret Che...