When a Crisis Opens New Academic Perspectives: The New Webinar Series of the SIEF Ritual Year Working Group

For over 10 years, the academic journal Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore has regularly published news on the activity of The Ritual Year Working Group (RY WG), a group of international scholars with shared interests in ritual activities, customs and festive celebrations throughout the yearly calendric cycle, an affiliate of the International Society of Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF – Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore). This includes reviews of the annual WG’s conferences, reviews of panels organised by the WG at important congresses in the field of ethnology and folklore, and releases of new books. In addition, the journal has dedicated several special issues to topics addressed by the various academic meetings of the WG, reuniting studies written by its members (Fournier & Sedakova 2015; Sedakova & Vlaskina 2016, etc.). This article sheds light on the drastic changes that the academic world was recently confronted with during the Covid-19 pandemic, and on how the RY WG met the challenges of this new reality; it shows how a crisis can also open new possibilities.