The 9th Annual Scientific Assembly of Association of Russian Social Geographers opens at ASU

14 September 2018 Department of Information and Media Communications
On September 13, the opening ceremony of the 9th Annual Scientific Assembly of the Association of Russian Social Geographers (ARGO) and the International Scientific Conference "Modern Trends of Spatial Development and Priorities of Social Geography" took place at Altai State University.

Almost a decade ago, a group of economic geographers organized a community called the Association of Russian Social Geographers (ARGO) to unite efforts in solving the problems posed to scientists of this field. Each year, one of the major cities of Central Russia was chosen to be a meeting place for economic geographers, and this year it was decided to carry out another ARGO Assembly and an international conference on problems of economic geography in Barnaul for the first time.

"Altai State University receives the best representatives of the professional community of social  geographers from all over Russia. The assembly represents our entire vast country, individual schools, science leaders, young scientists. It is nice to see our foreign colleagues from Poland, Germany, France, China and Serbia among the participants. All this signifies the breadth of ties and the unity of our professional interests,” president of the Association of Russian Social Geographers, Doctor of Geography, professor, director of the North Caucasus Research Institute for Economic and Social Problems of the Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don), researcher at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad) Alexander Druzhinin. “Altai State University and the Faculty of Geography occupy a very important place in the Russian social geography. We have long known and valued our colleagues as high-class specialists. Not only does a strong school on economic geography develop at ASU, but fundamental science in preserved here. I would like to thank the rector’s office of the university and personally Sergey Zemlyukov for this. And I also want to say thank you for the warm welcome!"

"Socio-economic and political geography faces big challenges today. In the spring of this year the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin proposed to launch a large-scale program of spatial development in Russia, covering not only large but also small cities, as well as various separate territories of the country. The closer we come to small territorial settlements, the greater  is the opportunity to see and study the really existing links between the economy, the population, infrastructure and the environment. These resources have not been fully evaluated and studied, which sometimes leads to certain problems. Therefore, during today's meeting, I intend to urge colleagues to create proactive programs to solve the existing problems of economic geography," the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the scientific leader of the Pacific Institute of Geography, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, vice-president of the Russian Geographical Society, Doctor of Geography, Professor Pyotr Baklanov noted.

The plenary session of the International Scientific Conference "Modern Trends in Spatial Development and Priorities of Social Geography" continued the work of the Assembly.

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