Dear Reader,
in 2005, the 48th Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) was held near Moscow, the first time to take place in Russia proper. Before that, one meeting of the PIAC had been held in the USSR, it was the 29th Meeting which took place in Tashkent in 1986.
The list of participants and the programme of the 48th Meeting are available now.
Oliver Corff, March 23, 2023.
Dear Reader,
for the 39th Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Conference (PIAC) held in June 1996 in Szeged, Hungary, the list of participants and the programme are now available. That meeting had a fairly large number of participants (in the proximity of 100), a considerable number of them first-time participants; it is always important that the PIAC welcomes the next generation of scholars.
Oliver Corff, March 21, 2023.
Dear Reader,
The programme of the 17th Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), held in Bad Honnef 1974, is now available.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
March 11, 2023
Dear Reader,
The the discovery of archival materials always offers a fortunate opportunity to fill in blank spots in the history of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC). This is even more important in cases where no proceedings volume was ever produced.
For the 42nd Meeting of the PIAC held in Prague in 1999 hosted under the auspices of RFE/RL, the following materials are now available in addition to the existing article by Bruce Pannier:
As always, curating the PIAC archive relies on contributions from the PIAC community. Thus, in case you participated in that meeting but do not find your name in the aforementioned materials, please let me know and everything will be duly updated.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
Berlin, March 09, 2023
Dear Reader,
the 61st Annual Meeting of the PIAC took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in 2018. With more than 150 participants it definitely is one of the biggest PIAC meetings ever held; the Meeting was part of a series of other, more prominent high-level international events, among them the Third World Nomad Games, the celebrations for the 27th Independence Day of Kyrgyzstan, as well as the 6th Meeting of the Turkic Council, as it was then called.
The introduction contains links to the list of participants, the programme as well the presentations.
Sincerely yours,
Oliver Corff
Secretary General.
Berlin, February 3rd, 2023
Dear Reader,
Our Turkish colleague Süer Eker wrote an introduction to the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) and a report on the 47th Annual Meeting of the PIAC. He kindly gave permission to translate the report in English, and finally it could be published here.
Oliver Corff, January 23, 2023.
Dear Reader,
Recently, Viacheslav Zaytsev made the Book of Abstracts of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference available which was held in St. Petersburg, 2010. He also gave permission to make all abstracts available via programme and individual contributor.
This update was a good opportunity to finally present the report on that Meeting which was written by the President of that Meeting, Tatiana Pang.
The re-organized overview including T. Pang’s report of the Meeting can be found here, the book of abstracts here, individual abstracts are available via the programme.
Oliver Corff, January 23rd, 2023.
Dear Reader,
the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference took place in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1999. It is one of those meetings in the history of the PIAC where neither any conference material nor a proceedings volume are available.
The most comprehensive report was by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who hosted the 42nd Annual Meeting. Their report here is reproduced with kind permission by RFE/RL.
Report: 42nd Annual Meeting, Prague 1999
Oliver Corff, October 2022.
Dear Reader,
obituaries are an important means to share the memories of a person who has passed away. The writer of the obituary shares his or her knowledge of the deceased and, very often, shares the perceptions and sentiments related to that person. An obituary is thus a pathway to contribute to collective memory by sharing these individual observations and sentiments.
In a scholarly environment, collective memory is the essence of all academic pursuit. Without the achievements (and occasional errors) of our predecessors, meaningful reasoning would be simply impossible. It is thus understandable that writing obituaries is one of the many tasks of a scholar who takes history as the most important source of progress. In this tradition, PIAC members dedicate obituaries to their fellow members who have passed away.
References to obituaries dedicated to the following scholars, but published outside the domain of altaist.org, were added recently.
Oliver Corff, September 13, 2022
Dear Reader,
from the archives of Györges Hazai the editor could obtain the Programme of the 16th Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Ankara 1973. There are some minor differences between this programme and the Proceedings; not all speakers in the programme appear with their contributions in the Proceedings, but this quite a normal case as usually not all participants submit their papers for publication in written form, and sometimes the editors take an additional step of accepting only a selection of papers offered by the contributors for the Proceedings.
Oliver Corff, September 06, 2022