Monthly Archives: July 2024

Publications by PIAC Members

Dear Reader,

The end of the Cold War is not even an event of the recent past anymore as it is already one generation away. With increasing distance, the memory of this time either fades away or, for the younger members of the PIAC family, is not even accessible by personal experience anymore. Until recently, the general perception was that travel, exchange, exploration and scholarly field work had reached a new and hitherto unseen level of openness and ease. Yet, the PIAC was born during the Cold War and had to negotiate her path during the first 30-odd years of her history.

In sight of new geopolitical rivalries and tensions it must be thoroughly understood that the comparative ease and freedom of exchange and movement wo could enjoy during the last three decades is fragile rather than robust and should not be taken for granted and carved in stone. Quite to the contrary, it is necessary to understand the historical background of the PIAC in order to be able to appreciate the scholarly exchanges the PIAC managed to conduct in the first half of her history.

in May 2024, our colleague Kinga Szálkai published an interesting article on these issues of the history of the PIAC, focussing of the environment of and opportunities for scholarly exchange and work during the Cold War. The article is part of the The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations, the full citation is:

Szálkai, K. (2024). The Permanent International Altaistic Conference. In: Marton, P., Thomasen, G., Békés, C., Rácz, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05750-2_81-1.

The abstract of the paper is available under the DOI stated in the citation.

Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 19, 2024

Previous Meetings: Information on 37th Meeting, Chantilly 1994, now available

Dear Reader,

The editor continues to negotiate his path through a huge treasure trove of PIAC documents: books of abstracts, lists of participants, and programmes of previous PIAC Meetings. If these materials contain many hand-written notes or are typeset by typewriter which was typically the case until the 1990s, they have to be copied manually. Thus, it is understandable that this is a time-consuming process. On the other hand, the editor does not process the materials in a linear, time-sequential fashion but his choices are rather prompted by a multitude of factors, curiosity not being the least among them.

That is why the List of Participants and Titles of Communications of the 37th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, held in Chantilly, France, in 1994, is available only now.

Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 2024

 

66th Meeting Göttingen, 2024: Report

Dear Reader,

the 66th Annual Meeting of the PIAC was held in Göttingen from June 30 to July 5, 2024. Held for the eleventh time in Germany, It was a very successful meeting as it saw the number of participants (from 15 countries) return to pre-Covid levels (57 participants joined the Meeting), among them many young participants.

The report of the Meeting is now online.

Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 08, 2024