Volunteers needed!
Volunteers needed for the 2025 Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, 3–6 June (see full programme). Please read the overview below and then complete the SIEF 2025 volunteer form.
Congress Overview
As part of the Congress volunteer team, your registration fees will be paid for, so you can hear and see in person scholars from the fields of Ethnology, Folklore, and Anthropology, whose work will have deep relevance to your own interests and potential research.
It will be the University of Aberdeen’s biggest ever conference with around 850 delegates in person and another 250 online. The conference will attract the world’s great scholars in Ethnology, Folklore, and Anthropology, and will feature plenary talks on topics ranging from Indigenous Knowledge (Shawn Wilson, Opaskwayak Cree Nation), tradition archives (Clíona O’Carroll), ethnographic work in vulnerable contexts (Amy Schuman and Don Kulick), and art-based methodologies (Si Poole).
The panels cover topics of relevance to most Schools across the University beyond the Humanities and Social Sciences, including Medical Sciences (health care ethnographies), SBS (ecological ethnography / human-animal and human-plant relations), Law (activism and legal systems), Computing Science (AI), etc.
There will also be a robust film programme with screenings on migration, material cultural, ritual, vernacular religion, music, and more.
Volunteer Information
Tasks
These include
- rotating shifts at the reception desk (usually 3–3.5 shifts);
- looking after the presentation tech of panels (e.g. helping presenters to transfer files from USB sticks to the presentation computer, ensuring the projector is on, and that the sound is working, ensuring zoom is running and recording, etc., reporting any problems to NomadIT team members who will be close by to help);
- ushering and guiding at the beginning and end of events and at breaks;
- operating the roving mics during keynote plenary Q&A sessions, running errands, helping with the Book Exhibit.
Volunteer Training There will be volunteer training session on 2 or 3 June covering reception check-in, managing the support of panel rooms, and knowing your way around congress information such as the timetable, venue, etc. Training usually takes around 2.5 hours.
Benefits In return for your help, you would receive full access to all the sessions when not working, lunch and tea/coffee, a free ticket to the congress social event on Friday 6 June, a volunteering certificate, and a souvenir Congress t-shirt. Note that because the congress is hybrid, you will also have access to any recordings post-congress for panel sessions, events and plenaries online.
Volunteering not only gives you access to some very interesting presentations and discussions, but being part of a Congress organising team is good work experience – as well as being good fun!
How to Join
If you are interested and available, please have a look at information about the and Congress and SIEF via the links provided in this email and complete this form to state your interest by Friday, 16 May (or as soon as you can before). Once we have a confirmed team, will send you a link to a form that gathers your contact details and preferences. Among other things, this form will ask which events, plenaries, and panels you are keen to attend. We rely on your preferences when constructing a rota that allows you either to help with events/panels you are interested in or have free time to attend them. Your help will be needed throughout the congress. Please see the Congress website to find out more about the event. Hope you’ll be able to help us make the SIEF2025 congress a success!