معرفی
Risto Järv is an Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, with a 0.20 FTE appointment. He also serves as the Head of the Estonian Folklore Archives at the Estonian Literary Museum (since 2009). His academic career includes roles as a Senior Research Fellow (2006–2009) and Research Fellow (1997–2006) at the University of Tartu.
Education: PhD in Folklore (2005) and MA in Folkloristics (1997) from the University of Tartu. His doctoral thesis, The Texts and Texture of Estonian Fairy Tales: An Archive-Centred View, explored Estonian folklore through archival analysis.
Research focuses on Estonian and comparative folklore, emphasizing archival studies, digital humanities, folk narrative analysis, and cultural heritage preservation. He has contributed to projects like the ‘Estonian Folklore Archives comes to visit’ lecture series (2017), earning the ‘Tartu Tradition Carrier’ award. His work bridges traditional and modern methods, including computational text analysis.
Publications span over 180 works, including articles on folklore variation, proverb analysis, and collaborative archival practices. Awards include the 2020 Cultural Endowment Award for Folk Culture and multiple EMMA Awards for educational folklore materials.
Administrative roles include editorial board memberships for journals like Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, and leadership in organizations such as the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR). He co-curated the 2020–2021 ‘Once upon a Time’ fairy tale exhibition at the Estonian National Museum.
