Recent progress in mermaid (and merfolk) studies

Mermaids (and, more recently merfolk) have been the subject of examination in a number of scholarly studies. Here are a few examples from the last 5 years (or so).

● ARE MERMAIDS REAL? Rhetorical Discourses and the Science of Merfolk.in Shima, Volume 12 Number 2 2018

● Swimming with mermaids: Communication and social density in the Second Life merfolk community in Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 48, July 2015, Pages 226-235

● How the Naturalists Described Merfolk or Mermaids: Fishes, Women, and Mammalia in Hikaku Bungaku Journal of Comparative Literature

● How fast could a mermaid swim? in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics, Volume 7, 2018

● Bodies and technologies: Becoming a ‘mermaid’: myth, reality, embodiment, cyborgs, windsurfing and the sea in Living with the Sea, Knowledge, Awareness and Action, 2018 – Taylor & Francis

● Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid in Western Folklore; Chico Vol. 78, Iss. 1, (Winter 2019):

Research research : Martin Gardiner

Photo credit : Miss ‘Definitely’ Downtown. A Norfolk mermaid.

Photographer: Captain Albert E. Theberge

Affiliation: NOAA Corps (ret.)

Date: 2003 June

Location: Virginia, Norfolk

Subject: Coastline

Subject: Mid-Atlantic Virginia

Subject: Art