Assoc. Prof. Vihra Baeva works at the Department of Anthropology of Verbal Traditions at the BAS Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum. She has lectured at Plovdiv University ‘Paisii Hilendarski’, Sofia University ‘St Kliment Ohridski’, at the Universities of Łódź and Palermo. Assoc. Prof. Vihra Baeva is the author of the monograph ‘The Thread of Life. Between the Fertility Belt and the Virgin’s Holy Girdle (Sofia, 2012), as well as of a lot of research papers and articles in Bulgarian and international books and journals. She has taken part in scientific forums in Bulgaria, Poland, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Croatia. She writes popular science materials for the newspaper ‘24 Hours’, ‘Women’s Magazine’, and ‘Magazine 8’ and has appeared in radio and television programmes. Her research interests are the religious cultures of Bulgaria and the Balkans. She applies interdisciplinary approaches to her research work into the anthropology of wonder, local studies, local cults, symbolic anthropology, oral traditions and folklore, the anthropology of dreams and dreaming, the anthropology of pilgrimage, etc.