SHU academics investigate Contemporary Legend in the REVENANT
Revenant Website Header Image © Revenant Journal
This week sees the release of a special edition of the peer reviewed online journal REVENANT, edited and curated by members of SHU’s Centre for Contemporary Legend Research Group, Dr. David Clarke, Dr Sophie Parkes-Nield, Andrew Robinson and Dr Diane Rodgers.
REVENANT is a highly regarded peer reviewed, online journal committed to the scholarly, academic and creative exploration of the supernatural, the uncanny and the weird in any form, led by Ruth Heholt at based at Falmouth University.
The special CCL issue begins with a detailed and informative introduction to Contemporary Legend study by the editorial team. In preparing this overview Andrew and Sophie worked closely with Professor Paul Smith, renowned folklorist and Professor Emeritus at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, who helped establish Contemporary Legend as an academic discipline in the 1980s, organising the first ever international conference on the subject at Sheffield University in 1982.
‘Crying Boy’ portraits credited to ‘G Bragolin’. Image © A Robinson 2025.
The issue includes peer reviewed papers, book reviews and creative works by all four members of the editorial team including papers exploring The Curse of the Crying Boy (David Clarke) and the history of Buxton‘s forgotten Lovers Leap (Andrew Robinson) with four poems by Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Carolyn Waudby.
Lover’s Leap and The Entrance to Sherbrook Dell, © Andrew Robinson 2021
Alongside contributions by CCL researchers Andrew and Sophie have curated a selection of papers and articles from leading international academics in the study of Folklore and Contemporary Legend covering subjects as diverse as Taiwanese folklore and NETFLIX including papers by Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (University of Kentucky) on Contemporary Legend In the YouTube documentary series Hellier and Daniel P. Compora (University of Toledo) on Michigan’s Monsters.
The CCL team is continuing its work on the UKRI funded National Folklore Survey of England with further releases of their findings due to be released close to St George’s Day.
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