Association of Slavists POLYSLAV

About POLYSLAV

The history of POLYSLAV

The Polyslav group was founded on October 11, 1997, at the University of Konstanz (Slavic department) by a group of young linguists whose work addresses the study of Slavic languages. The first scientific conference under the name of Polyslav took place on 9-11 October of the same year, with its chief initiators and organizers being Bjorn Wiemer (University of Konstanz) and Markus Giger (University of Zurich). About 38 young researchers (doctoral students) from Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Russia and Bulgaria took part in the conference. Initially, Polyslav aimed at sharing current research in the field of Slavic studies among the German-speaking Slavists community. This was a groundbreaking idea. The Polyslav research has been European in the truest sense of the word, in that the study of Slavic languages helps to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western Europe. The conference gives a platform for the colleagues from Slavic and German-speaking countries to present and discuss their research with the international audience. Furthermore, Polyslav makes available the materials and the research results in the field of Slavic linguistics. Starting with the first proceedings in Konstanz back in 1997, the annual meetings of Polyslav take place each autumn in various European cities and countries with an average of 50 participants. Each year the Polyslav conference publishes conference proceedings of annual meetings. In 2011, at the plenary meeting of Polyslav at the The Jan Amos Komensky University Prague, the participants decided to merge into the International Association of Slavists under the name of POLYSLAV, a nongovernmental organization (in short, POLYSLAV NGO), which was later registered at the Ministry of Inner Affairs in Prague. The three cofounders of POLYSLAV are Tatiana Loikova-Nasenko (Czech Republic), Martina Tomancova (Germany) and Anna Moehl (Switzerland).