Tag Archives: Tashkent

Mourning Alexander (Sasha) Vovin

The members of the PIAC community mourn Alexander (Sasha) Vovin, directeur d’études, Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l’Asie orientale (CRLAO), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (ÉHESS), who passed away in Paris on April 8, 2022. He leaves to the academic world a rich and complex oeuvre encompassing trail-blazing studies in historical linguistics on ancient and classical East Asian languages, in particular Japanese, Korean, Mongolic and Tungusic. His research interests and the vast number of his published works cover many more languages and approaches, and inspired and will continue to inspire a large circle of colleagues and students all over the world. Alexander Vovin was not only an exceptional scholar but also served the academic community in his capacity of academic teacher, editor, referee, convenor of conferences and recipient of research funds.

Sasha was a longtime friend and supporter of the PIAC. In 1986 he attended an Annual Meeting (Tashkent) for the first time. At the Meeting in 2017 (Székesfehérvár) which he attended with his wife Sambi Ishisaki-Vovin and two children, he presented first results of the spectacular analysis of the Brahmi Khüis Tolgoi and Bugut inscriptions, a project which he developed jointly with other PIAC colleagues D. Maue, M. Ölmez and E. de la Vaissière.

Sasha was a wonderful companion, sociable, outgoing and endowed with a rare sense of humour, not to forget his refreshing talent for constructive criticism. The PIAC community will greatly miss this unusually successful scholar and esteemed friend.

Barbara Kellner-Heinkele
Secretary General
April 10, 2022

Previous Meetings: 29th Meeting Tashkent, 1986

Dear Reader,

While the list of abstracts of Soviet contributions to this Meeting has been available for a while, there is now also a table of contents of Turkish contributions: those which appeared in Turkey, and a selection of those which were also translated into Russian and appeared in Sovyetskaya Türkologiya.

That meeting was a very special one, not only for the complex political environment of Western-Soviet relations of the time, but also for its sheer size: a total of 270 participants is reported. For the record, I decided to reproduce the keynote by Denis Sinor as well as the opening remarks on behalf of the delegation from Turkey by Zeynep Korkmaz.

Oliver Corff.

Previous Meetings: Information about 29th Meeting, Tashkent

Dear Reader,

Thanks to T. Pang’s efforts to locate a copy of the collection of abstracts of the 29th Meeting of the PIAC in Tashkent, USSR, 1986, the table of contents of this collection is now available.

Neither Proceedings nor an official report of this meeting were ever formally published. However, one of the three participants from China, Chen Wei, wrote a brief introduction to this meeting which was published in a journal on Mongolian studies in 1987.

Oliver Corff.