IRFL10040

Listening, observing, and sensing the world around us are essential components of folkloristics. Folklore is artistic communication in small groups: informally learned, person-to-person practices through which people create, share, and transmit culture in everyday contexts. Ethnography is the research practice that documents and interprets this process. At the centre of folklore studies lies ethnographic fieldwork: the documentation and analysis of vernacular culture as it is lived, performed, and transmitted.

This module introduces students to ethnographic research methods through active engagement with the folklore of their own lives. Students learn to unpack the intersubjectivities and positionalities inherent to qualitative research, design research questions, select documentation methods, and navigate ethical responsibilities. The module emphasises participant observation, sensory attention to soundscapes and material environments, digital documentation, and auto-ethnographic reflection. Interview-based inquiry is introduced as preparation for future fieldwork.

Students also learn to critically engage with archival materials, reconstructing fieldwork encounters documented in the National Folklore Collection and on dúchas.ie, and carefully analysing the intersubjectivities that shaped their production. Beyond the archive, the module explores such approaches as sensory ethnography and multispecies encounters with feathered others on campus, as well as scrolling across, engaging and sharing digital folklore.

Students reflect on their own vernacular practices: what they make and cook, the stories and beliefs they share, the jokes, memes, and music that circulate in their social worlds, as a foundation for understanding the folklore of everyday life.

Practical assignments develop skills in documentation, transcription, coding, and archiving. Students communicate findings through written analysis and oral presentation, reflecting the discipline's emphasis on accessible scholarship and reciprocal engagement.