Scientist in «outer space»

Abstract

The article presents an autoethnographic study of the practice of delivering public lectures on folklore and traditional culture. The author, an independent field researcher, analyzes her own lecturing path from the early 2020s to the formation of a consistent strategy. The self-study draws on a corpus from her Telegram channel: lecture announcements, post-lecture reflections, and listener comments. The article examines the contradiction between academic frameworks and the demands of the public educational format: stereotypical audience expectations («folklore about folklore»), the need for simplification and the use of appealing rhetoric («authentic folklore,» «those very fairy tales»). It analyzes the scholar’s self-definition outside academic institutions in conditions where the boundaries between «scientific» and «naive» knowledge are blurred. A methodological technique is shown that allows smoothing this contradiction: the inclusion of authentic field recordings in the lecture, which serves as a mediator between the lecturer’s expert position and the listener’s personal experience. The article fits into the discussion of the «anthropological turn» in folkloristics and the role of the scholar in the public sphere.