AI Methods for Research of Folkloristic Narratives, an international workshop held on June 13 at the University of Ljubljana, brought together researchers from the US, Slovenia and other European countries to explore significant advancements in the application of AI in computational folkloristics.
As part of his keynote speech for the workshop, Tim Tangherlini, BIDS Associate Faculty Director, highlighted advances his lab has made on multilingual search for low-resource languages tuned to the challenges of folk narrative, and network and GIS methods for discovering latent patterns in large cultural datasets.
Tangherlini’s participation is indicative of BIDS commitment to cultural analytics, an initiative he leads, which incorporates the perspectives of science and society to AI. Deep learning methods provide new pathways for interpreting large cultural datasets and finding latent patterns, structures, and discursive shifts that might otherwise remain hidden using traditional methods. Researchers at the workshop showed how emerging AI and computational methods could help detect recurring motifs, classify tale types, and extract embedded values from tales across time and languages.
Tangherlini remarked: “An important challenge going forward in AI is how we can leverage these technologies to foster understanding across languages, across time and across cultures. And perhaps we can learn how to make peace with fearsome dragons.”
Photo: The dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana, a protector of the city, embodying power, courage and wisdom.
The workshop is a part of the collaborative project, Unraveling Sociocultural Dynamics through Computational Folkloristics, that brings UC Berkeley/BIDS researchers like Tangherlini together with the Institute IRRIS for Research, Development and Strategies of Society, Culture and the Environment and the Faculty of Computer and Information Science at the University of Ljubljana. Polona Tratnik, Head of the Centre for Digital Humanities at IRRIS and professor at the University of Ljubljana, chaired the organizing committee, and was assisted in her efforts by Professors Marko Robnik-Šikonja, (CS University of Ljubljana), head of the Machine Learning and Language Technology Lab, and Darko Darovec, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Institute IRRIS.
BIDS and UC Berkeley’s iSchool will be cosponsoring a cultural analytics speaker series and workshop fall 2025/spring 2026. Subscribe to the BIDS newsletter for event updates and news!