The Institute for Historical Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Bulgarian-Hungarian Historical Commission organized an international scientific conference “Foreign Humanities Studying Bulgaria and the Bulgarians” which took place from 11 to 13 November. The initiative was carried out in the framework of the “Development and Promotion of Bulgarian Studies Abroad” National Scientific Programme funded by the Ministry of Education and Science. The moderator was Prof. Penka Peykovska. The theme of the conference attracted 40 scholars from academic and university centres in ten European countries. Foreign fellows of the Institute under the Programme also presented the results of their research in our country.
The conference was opened by the Director of the Institute, Prof. Dr. Daniel Vachkov, and the Scientific Secretary of BAS in the division of “Cultural and Historical Heritage and National Identity” and National Coordinator of the Programme, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elka Traykova.
The keynote lecture was delivered by Prof. DSc. Antal Molnár, Director of the Institute of History in Budapest on the topic “The Bulgarian Catholic Church in the World of Balkan Catholicism. Identity, mission and organization on the eastern frontier of the Western Church in the 17th century”. The event took place at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Sofia and aroused great public interest. The attendees were greeted by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Hungary H.E. Miklós Boros.
The conference sessions were held in the large conference hall of the institute. A wide range of topics was discussed, united in five panels: ‘Development of Bulgarian Studies in Individual Countries: A General View’, ‘Bulgarian Studies Centres’, ‘Personal Contributions to Foreign Bulgarian Studies: The Historical Perspective’, ‘Bulgarian Studies Contributions of Contemporary Humanitarians’ and ‘Foreign Bulgarian Studies through the Prism of Historiography’. In their reports, the participants presented the development of Bulgarian studies in Austria, Albania, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, the USA, Slovakia, Türkiye, Hungary, France, Croatia and Czechia.
