St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

Sergei Andreyev The Forum Rationale: A Note by the Conference’s Conceptualiser The importance of Afghanistan’s problématique is beyond any doubt due to this country’s key position in the global political developments as well as due to the peculiarities of the Afghan society shaping the resilience of its socio-political and cultural patterns vis-à-vis external impacts. Afghanistan and some of its environs is also unique as a liminal region between the Iranian world, Turkic Central Asia and South Asia that may be described in terms of the Afghan trans-boundary cultural and linguistic oecumene. However, notwithstanding the practical and academic significance of that region its study is rather unbalanced. Regular policy-oriented conferences on Afghanistan bringing together policy-making professionals and scholars of Afghanistan are of applied nature; however important they may be. They mainly focus on the current problématique and primarily deal with policies, socio-economic and security issues. There has been no exclusively academic conference focusing on a fundamental study ofAfghanistan and theAfghan trans-boundary cultural and linguistic oecumene for decades. Insufficient knowledge of academic research onAfghanistan sometimes translates into a distorted view of the country that may lead to inadequate political decisions, which is vividly illustrated by the USAand its allies’actions inAfghanistan. This is a common knowledge for those engaged in theAfghan Studies. In light of that, there was the first attempt to have an academic moot dealing with the Afghan studies in London, the UK on 6–7 November 2015, however its scope was mainly limited to the legacy of Mountstuart Elphinstone. Thus, a comprehensive academic conference on Afghanistan and the Afghan trans-boundary cultural and linguistic oecumene is long overdue and still remains of paramount importance for international Afghan studies. A conference organised by St Petersburg State University Faculty of Asian and African Studies will serve this purpose.