KarRC RAS CEO Olga Bakhmet
-- We welcome this happening as it will help us move forward to major productive actions, participate in various joint projects, like those supported by the Russian Science Foundation and Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education. New opportunities arise for both parties, — said KarRC RAS leader Olga Bakhmet at the signing of the agreement.
Olga Bakhmet noted that the KarRC RAS is consistently broadening its interactions with various foreign scientific and educational organizations, thereby deepening its international cooperation. While maintaining the traditional collaboration with foreign colleagues where possible, Karelian scientists are establishing new, mutually beneficial contacts with researchers from Belarus, China, India, and now Abkhazia.
-- We have preliminarily agreed on certain things with scientists from Sukhumi, so we look forward to years of meaningful work, -- clarified Olga Bakhmet.
Zurab Dzhapua, President of the Abkhazian Academy of Sciences
The cooperation agreement was signed during an international seminar focused on field methods, archiving, and the study of the collected materials. Zurab Dzhapua, President of the Abkhazian Academy of Sciences, was one of the keynote speakers, giving a talk on the folklore and ethnographic research conducted in Abkhazia over the past decades. The agreement between the two scientific organizations, however, envisions cooperation across various scientific fields.
Regarding each other as strategic partners, the parties have agreed to promote collaboration in a number of research areas: history, archaeology, ethnology, folklore studies, history of literature and literary criticism, geophysics, hydrophysics, geoecology, applied and discrete mathematics, agriculture, ecology, biology, and natural resource management.
The KarRC RAS and the Abkhazian Academy of Sciences plan to conduct joint research, theoretical and experimental work of mutual interest, prepare joint publications, and organize joint events – seminars, conferences, roundtables, symposia, etc.
Commenting on the newly signed agreement, the seminar’s organizer and facilitator Alexander Petrov, Head of the Folklore and Literature Studies Section (with Audio Record Archive) at the ILLH KarRC RAS, emphasized the everlasting importance of creative scientific partnerships with foreign colleagues, as they enrich science, especially when maintained on a constant basis.
Today, the international science-to-practice seminar at the KarRC RAS was continued as two thematic sections: one dedicated to field research, and the other to the theory and practice of archival work. The main topics the scientists discussed today were the formats and methods of expeditionary work, results of field research, approaches to archiving, including the compilation of collections, performer personalia, methodologies for creating inventories, catalogs, card indexes, multimedia reports, and many others.
The 12th International Seminar "Methods of Fieldwork, Archiving, and Study of Folklore, Ethnographic, Linguistic, and Manuscript Materials" is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of integrated expeditions to Zaonezhye area and the 70th anniversary of the Audio Record Archive of the ILLH KarRC RAS. However, many speakers at the plenary and thematic sessions remarked that 2026 is a jubilee year for both permanent organizers of the seminar — it is the 80th anniversary of the KarRC RAS and the 60th anniversary of the Kizhi Open-air Museum. The seminar is thus a worthy element of the series of events celebrating the anniversary of the Karelian Research Center RAS.
