Intelligent Search Engine for Belief Legends

• Applicants: Dr.-Ing. Holger Meyer; Dr. Christoph Schmitt
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Data Management, Data-Intensive Systems, Computer Science Methods in Business Informatics
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 329380566

ISEBEL provides intelligent search and analysis across three of the world slargest machine actionable folklore collections (Dutch Folktale Database-Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam, the Danish Folktale Database-UCLA, and the Mecklenburger Folklore Database-WossiDiA, Rostock) presenting the opportunity for large scale data-driven research into traditional folk expressive culture. By facilitating search, discovery and analysis across all three collections, ISEBEL provides researchers an unprecedented opportunity to discover patterns both within and across the target corpora. The proposed research, focusing on storytellers, legends and the dispersion of (historical) beliefs in magic, witchcraft, hauntings and supernaturalbeings seeks to reveal what ordinary people believed, and how storytelling traditions and story repertoires differed in and across these three areas. Modeling folklore as the dynamic circulation of culturally meaningful traditional expressive forms on and across social networks profers the possibility for new insights into the formation of belief and the correlations between storytelling and the rich cultural contexts in which those stories arise.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Theo Meder; Professor Dr. Timothy R Tangherlini