The Eighth Congress is postponed until 2019

After a lengthy process of consultations and preparatory measures, the Organizing Committee is forced to announce that the International Congress of Belarusian Studies will not take place in 2018.

Since November 2017, at the initiative of the Organizing Committee, representatives of the academic community, state bodies, and other interested parties, preparatory work had been underway to hold the Congress in Belarus.

Over the past seven months, productive and intensive consultations have been held with Belarusian State University, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, representatives of the academic community, public organizations, and other interested parties.

At the same time, the discussion of technical details revealed a significant number of organizational difficulties.

It is clear that holding the Congress at a high organizational level, with the interests of all parties coordinated, requires much more time and organizational effort and cannot be implemented this year.

We express our gratitude to all academic institutions, state bodies, and public structures that formally and informally supported the Organizing Committee in its effort to hold the Congress in Belarus for the first time.

We also understand that many technical and organizational obstacles are objective in nature, and we see no political subtext in them.

In accordance with the previously defined concept, the Organizing Committee plans to hold the next International Congress of Researchers in 2019 outside Belarus and will work on preparing the Congress in Belarus in 2020.

In 2018, only the awarding of the International Congress of Belarusian Studies Prize for the best scholarly publications based on the results of 2017 is planned.

Details will be announced shortly.

Respectfully,
Andrei Kazakevich,
Chair of the Organizing Committee.