DR. SANDY HOBBS

Sandy Hobbs is a good example of a living senior scholar who has made outstanding contributions to legend scholarship.

Sandy first became interested in contemporary legends (calling them “modern folk tales”) in the early 1960s when it was not yet recognized as a field of study. He worked at first in comparative isolation but then began to participate in the Sheffield Perspectives on Contemporary Legend seminars. He was one of the working party set up to explore the possibility of initiating an international society and was thus one of the founders of ISCLR. Sandy has continued to publish and present papers on legends over six decades.

Besides the personal honouring of Sandy’s contribution to CL research, it would be an important promotion of the role of Psychological inquiry into a field that is predominated by folklorists. Sandy as a psychologist is a rare breed in his work in examining and explaining CL phenomena. He is probably one of the last of the original generation of CL researchers that are still active today.

Sandy Hobbs has worked at several Scottish universities. He retired in 2002 as Reader in Psychology at the University of Paisley, following which he became recipient of a Leverhume Emeritus Fellowship. He is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Media, Culture and Society at the University of the West of Scotland. He encouraged and inspired countless others to take an interest in their field.

ACHIEVEMENTS