On Friday, 4 September 2026, the monograph Historical Biodiversity in the Alps: Grassland Agroecosystems in the Last Millennium was presented at the Mesto knjige festival at the Maks Bookstore Café in Nova Gorica. The conversation with historian and geographer Žiga Zwitter was moderated by Špela Ledinek Lozej. Co-authored by Zwitter and botanist Leonid Rasran, the…
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On Wednesday, 22 July 2026, a film evening dedicated to pastoralism, life and wildlife in the mountains took place in front of Dom Trenta. The audience watched Images from Trenta Valley by Naško Križnar and My Summer Holiday by Petra Seliškar. The first film offers a valuable record of sheep farming and everyday life in…
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On Wednesday, 8 July 2026, we marked the 150th anniversary of the Petrič Alpine Dairy Hut on the Laz mountain pasture, one of the best-preserved alpine dairy huts in the Julian Alps. The gathering was organised by Tatjana Marušič, the hut’s custodian, and Lucija Gartner, the dairymaid of Laz, in cooperation with Bohinj Tourism. Lucija…
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From 13 to 16 June, the Department of Folkloristics at the University of Iceland, the Icelandic Association of Ethnology and Folklore, and the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies hosted the hybrid conference of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. Taking its cue from the conference title, the event focused on the many roles,…
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Walking seminars in the research project “A Grain of Salt, Crystallizing Coexistence: Salt Making as Experiential Environmental Wisdom” (ARIS: J6-50196) in 2024 and 2025. Sečovlje salterns, Strunjan salterns, Slovenia, 2024 and 2025 A walking seminar (or group ethnographic walk) is a method introduced in 2014 by Nick Shepherd, Christian Ernsten, and Dirk-Jan Visser, involving a…
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Sečovlje Salterns, Strunjan Salterns, Portorož; Slovenia, May 21–October 8, 2025 Piran’s salt-making tradition is an example of centuries of careful and sensitive human interaction with the environment. The delicate balance between human use of the space and respect for natural features is an important source of ecological knowledge and inspiration, upon which our future also…
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The research project “Grain of Salt, Crystallising Cohabitation: Salt-making as Experiential Environmental Wisdom” approaches traditional salt-working – the craft of producing sea salt – as embodied practical wisdom. Salt-working in north Istria is characterized primarily by its picturesque landscape and rich heritage and is rarely perceived from the perspective of the intertwining of human and…
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Between March 14 and 19, 2025, the 13th It’s About People conference, organized by Alma Mater Europaea University, was held in Maribor. The theme of the conference was Social and Technological Resilience for Health and Sustainable Development. On March 19, 2025, an online scientific panel entitled “Approaching Salt-working: From Heritage to Experiential Environmental Wisdom” was…
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From 9 to 11 February 2026, the international winter school Euregio Seminar 2026, titled Borders, Memory and Territorial Transformations in the Alpine Region, took place in Trento, Bolzano/Bozen and Bressanone/Brixen. The programme was jointly organised by the University of Trento and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Špela Ledinek Lozej also took part in the school.…
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To conclude the year, our program group hosted two guest researchers for our monthly reading sessions/meetings. In November, we were joined by Janine Schemmer to discuss the article ‘Silenced Memories and Practices of Un-Silencing: Mobilities in a Dynamic Alpine Border Landscape ‘ (co-authored with Marion Hamm; published in Cultural Analysis 19, 2021). In December, Mirna…
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