The Nature of The Sources: An Interview With Andrey Toporkov

Abstract

In the second of our continuing series of interviews with charms researchers about their scholarly life and work, we present an interview with Andrey Toporkov conducted remotely (by e-mail) early in 2022 (subsequently updated in late 2023) by Jonathan Roper, who also made the translation from Russian. Andrey Toporkov is one of the earliest members of the Committee for Charms, Charmers and Charming, having first attended our meetings in London in 2005. Since then, he has been a familiar figure at our conferences. He is a Doctor in Philology, a lead researcher at the Department of Folklore at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a professor and a corresponding-member of Russian Academy of Sciences.