Ethnographers and culturologists of the REC "The Greater Altai" will work in four scientific areas

The first meeting of the project session of the scientific group "Ethnography and Culturology of the Greater Altai" of the REC of Altaic and Turkic Studies "The Greater Altai" was held at Altai State University. The session defined four areas of work of the international team of scientists.

The session brought together experts and scientists from the Institute of Humanities of Altai State University, the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the RAS, the Siberian branch of the Heritage Institute, the Manas and Chingiz Aitmatov National Academy of Kyrgyzstan, National Academy of Science of Kyrgyz Republic, Kyrgyz National University named after Zhusup Balasagyn, Kazakhstan branch of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov, Samarkand State University, and Gorno-Altaisk State University.

Head of the project group, Director of the Institute of Humanities of AltSU, Professor Larisa Nekhvyadovich presented to the session participants four research areas of the group’s work, defined in order to specify the work of each expert in 2023:

• "Ethnography of the Greater Altai" (project leader - Director of IIMO, an associate professor of Altai State University Ivan Nazarov);

• "Epic of the Greater Altai" (project leader - Professor of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after A. I. Herzen, full member of the National Academy of Arts of the Kyrgyz Republic named after T. Sadykov Lyubov Mosolova);

• "Sacred Values of the Greater Altai" (project leader - a leading researcher of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the RAS Alexander Seleznev and Professor of Altai State University Evgeny Popov);

• “Turkic toponyms and ottoponymic formations” (project leader – Professor of Altai State University Lidiya Dmitrieva).

“Our main goal is to ensure a comprehensive study and preservation of the cultural heritage of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, to identify common and specific features in the Slavic and Turkic cultures that are part of the Greater Altai region. The past year of 2022 showed that our scientific group became unified and productive. In 2023, we are facing a serious research task, which, we are all sure, will lead to a successful and effective result,” emphasized Larisa Nekhvyadovich, Head of the Ethnography and Cultural Studies of the Greater Altai project group, Director of the Institute of Humanities, professor of AltSU.

At the meeting of the strategic session, scientists discussed the issues of working on the database "Turkic toponyms and ottoponymic formations in the materials of the epistolary heritage of the Altai Spiritual Mission in the mid-19th - early 20th centuries," preparing for printing the manuscript of the monograph "Epic heritage in the culture of the peoples of Central Asia: archetypal and modern,” as well as the development of the concept of the “Small Encyclopedia of the Sacred Values of the Slavic and Turkic Peoples of the Greater Altai.”