The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russian Federation), the Francke Foundations (Halle, Germany) and the University of Hamburg have issued a call for papers for the international scientific conference “‘To disseminate the sciences and to benefit humanity’: On the 250th Anniversary of the Physical Expeditions of the Academy of Sciences,” which will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia from November 19-21, 2018.

More detailed information and submission instructions can be found below:

In 1768-74 the Imperial Academy of Sciences carried out a series of expeditions to the Volga region, the Urals, Northern Europe, Siberia, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. The expedition members were Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811), Ivan Ivanovich Lepechin (1740–1802), Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin (1744–1774), Johann Peter Falk (1732–1774), Johann Gottlieb Georgi (1729–1802), Johann Anton Güldenstädt (1745–1781), Nikolai Petrovich Rychkov (1746–1798), Nikolai Jakovlevich Ozercovskii (1750–1827). The expeditions aimed at exploring the territory of the Russian Empire in a complex manner.

The conference will address topics related to research on the results of these expeditions and on other Russian and Western European expeditions of the second half of the 18th century:

  • The “physical” expeditions of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the context of European scientific expeditions of the period 1760–1790;
  • The anthropology of traveling;
  • Programs, itineraries and results of the »physical« academic expeditions;
  • The relations of the researchers to their object of research as well as their dialogue with the indigenous population;
  • Cataloging, publishing and exhibiting the findings of the expeditions.

Paper proposals for the conference, together with an abstract of no more than 2,500 characters (including spaces), can be sent to the following e-mail address: expedition@kunstkamera.ru until April 28, 2018.

Please indicate in the application:

  • First name and name of the presenter (and possibly the co-presenter)
  • Scientific degree and academic position
  • Institutional address
  • Title of the lecture.

Contact Information:

Tatiana Sergeevna Kisser (Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography Peter the Great (Kunstkamera))

E-mail: tkisser@bk.ru

Friederike Lippold (Francke Foundations, Halle)

E-mail: lippold@francke-halle.de