Nazarbayev University hosted the 65th Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference
Nazarbayev University hosted the 65th Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference
Nazarbayev University hosted the 65th Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference on topic “New Sources for the Study of the Altaic World” in sponsorship together with the International Turkic Academy, from July 30 to August 4. ITA has contributed a recorded presentation by Napil Bazylkhan on the recent (2022) archeological findings in Mongolia of the earliest runiform inscriptions in the Old Turkic language, including the earliest occurrence of the name Türk.
It is worth noting that PIAC was established on September 4, 1957 in Munich at the 24th International Congress of Orientalists. PIAC has become a universally recognized platform where major orientalists collect experience, research on the history and culture, linguistics and ethnology of related peoples of the Altaic language family. PIAC meeting was held in Kazakhstan for the second time, with the first one taking place 30 years ago in Almaty.
It was a four-day conference with 9 panel sessions and 31 conference speakers, which is an unprecedented high number of participants for the first time in history of PIAC. The conference included more than 30 presentations of scholars from different universities such as University of Helsinki, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris), Liaocheng University, Nankai University, Renmin University of China, Masaryk University, L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Zhusup Balasagun Kyrgyz National University and Waseda University. Participants covered various topics where presented new sources and documents found in archives and collections regarding Central Asia which had not been studied previously.
The PIAC members were invited to a tour of Nazarbayev University campus and library where Prof. Michal Schwarz has gifted the book “Mongolia Ritual Texts in Manuscript Collections in the Czech Republic” in addition to NU Library.
One of the conference attendees, Javeed Ahwar who is a postdoctoral scholar, shared his opinion about the conference: “As a participant of this conference, I found PIAC 65 an interesting platform where local and international experts come together to share their works on Altaic-Turkic studies. The program was structured very wisely combining cultural tours with academic seminars and presentations. It was gracious of Nazarbayev University to host such a conference and honor to see professor Schamiloglu presiding it here. It was a huge responsibility which he carried on with grace. I hope this tradition continues and Nazarbayev University keeps hosting conferences of such caliber here in the future.”
