The platform „kulturstudieren.org“ refers to a discipline that has many names at universities in German-speaking countries. The former term „folklore“ has been replaced at almost all locations by other terms that describe the program and the profile of the subject more accurately:  In addition to the term „European Ethnology“ (Marburg, Innsbruck, Bamberg, Vienna, Berlin), these include „Cultural Anthropology“ (Bonn, Graz), „Empirical Cultural Studies“ (Tübingen, Zurich), „Comparative Cultural Studies“ (Regensburg) and „Popular Cultures“ (Zurich), as well as double terms such as Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology (Frankfurt or Freiburg) or Empirical Cultural Studies and European Ethnology (Munich). The different names indicate changes in content, terminology, and methodological-theoretical aspects compared to the original discipline of folklore, and are based on local, university-policy, and different accentuations of the respective subject representatives.

In principle, the discipline is an ethnographically and often historically researching cultural science. As cultural anthropologists and folklorists, we investigate the socio-cultural change of ways of perception, interpretation and action as well as material objectivations of everyday life in a contemporary and historical perspective.