As part of the DEAGENCY project, I conduct ethnographic research among Hungarian mediums, seers, and their clients. I investigate why people seek contact with the dead and how encounters with spiritual practitioners influence personal understandings of death and the afterlife. My research also examines the changing role of mediumship within contemporary spiritual marketplaces and the experiential dimensions of spirit communication
I am Assistant Professor at the Department of Folklore, Faculty of Humanities, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest. My research focuses on the methodology and theory of folkloristics, digital folkloristics, folklore archives, vernacular religion, and the history of witchcraft and verbal magic. Previously, I was a researcher in the ERC-funded East–West Research Group on Vernacular Religion (2013-2018) and in the MTA–ELTE “Lendület” Historical Folkloristics Research Group (2019-2023).
Between 2018 and 2019, I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies, University of Alberta (Canada). I have also conducted research as a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam, Collegium Hungaricum Vienna, and University College Cork.
I am a member of the Editorial Board of Historical Studies on Central Europe (https://ojs.elte.hu/hsce) and serve as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Vallástudományi Szemle (Review of Religious Studies). Since 2015, I have been a member of the SIEF Working Group on Archives, serving as a Board Member since 2019 and as Co-Chair between 2021 and 2025.
MAIN PUBLICATIONS (BOOKS AND EDITORSHIP) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6677-5843
Ilyefalvi, Emese (2024). „Ha levelem elolvastad, add tovább”: Bonczidai Dezső kézírásos gyülekezeti levelei a két világháború közötti Kidén. [“When You Have Read My Letter, Pass It On”]. Emberek és kontextusok, 26. Erdélyi-Múzeum Egyesület, Cluj-Napoca. ISBN 978-606-739-255-5 https://real.mtak.hu/192669/
Ilyefalvi, E. (2024). The Possibilities of Enhanced Reading: Analyses with Voyant Tools on the Hungarian Verbal Charm Corpus. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 69(1), 187–210. https://doi.org/10.1556/022.2025.00011
Ilyefalvi, Emese (2023). Ráolvasások a keresőben. A folklórszövegek digitalizálásának elméleti, módszertani és technikai kérdései [Searching for Charms: Theoretical, Methodological, and Technical Issues in the Digitisation of Folklore Texts]. Reciti Kiadó; HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Ethnology. (Book) https://www.reciti.hu/2024/8669
Ilyefalvi, E. (2019). Dilemmas of Corpus Construction Beyond Folklore Collections: Threat as a Speech Act in Early Modern Witchcraft Trials. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 64(2), 483–505. https://doi.org/10.1556/022.2019.64.2.15
Ilyefalvi, E. (2018). The Theoretical, Methodological and Technical Issues of Digital Folklore Databases and Computational Folkloristics. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 63(1), 209–258. https://doi.org/10.1556/022.2018.63.1.10.
Ilyefalvi, E. (2017). Textualization Strategies, Typological Attempts, Digital Databases: What Is the Future of Comparative Charm Scholarship? Incantatio: An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming, 6, 37–77. https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2017_6_Ilyefalvi
Ilyefalvi, Emese (2014). Ráolvasások [Hungarian Verbal Charms]. Balassi Kiadó, Budapest. (Book) https://zenodo.org/records/53841
FIELDS OF INTEREST:
Theory and methodology of folkloristics
Digital and computational folkloristics
Folklore archives and digital heritage
Digital humanities and media archaeology
Vernacular religion and folk belief
Witchcraft, verbal magic, and charms
Contemporary spirituality