Marija Klobčar

Marija Klobčar (née Ftičar) is a Slovenian ethnologist and folklorist. Her research includes the role of oral tradition in history and everyday life, and the activities of itinerant singers as the bearers of folksong creativity. She is a professor of Folklore Studies and Mythology at the University of Ljubljana.

Biography Klobčar was born in Kamnik, Slovenia, and graduated from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, with bachelor's degree in Slavic Studies and Ethnology in 1982. She completed her master's degree in 1991 and her doctoral degree in 1997 in ethnology at the same university while she was employed at the Institute for the Protection of Natural and Cultural Heritage in Kranj. Her diploma thesis was titled Societies and events in Kamnik in the period between 1914 and 1941.

After graduating in 1983, she became employed as a researcher at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. After a short break for family reasons, she was employed in Kranj, and in 1998 at the ZRC SAZU (in English: Scientific Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) at the University of Ljubljana, where she does her research and teaching at the Institute of Music and Ethnography.

In presenting her with the Murka Award in 1999, the committee said she was a "a comprehensive research personality with a sensitive ear for interlocutors in the field" and cited: "Dare and curiosity broad-mindedness and breadth show her as a mature scientist, while her scientific vivacity testifies that the laureate's scientific path is a path of development, that she is still oriented towards new questions and insights, and that this is not the end of her life's work." The committee went on to note that "in addition to scientific monographs, numerous discussions and articles, there are also the award-winning author's thoughtful selections of folk songs from the archives of the Institute of Musical and Ethnographic Studies, which she collected on CDs." Murka Lifetime Achievement Award (2020) Excellent in Science award for the monograph Listen to our protector (2021)

Memberships International Ballad Commission SIEF Working Group on the Ritual Year Society for Slovene Studies Slovenian Ethnological Society