Thematic network “World images of indigenous people of the North” organized a scientific conference “Landscape in a narrative memory. Reality. Image. Modeling”, hosted by the North-Eastern Federal University with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Humanities and the Foundation “Maison des sciences de l’homme”, France (25-26 June 2015).
The imperative of this conference was to find the best possible ways to achieve a balance between traditional environmental management and new types of development of the mining industry. Participants discussed how to optimize hunting, northern cattle breeding in the new historical and economic conditions, to preserve grounds, flora and fauna, land and people with their cultural landscape memory.
The conference novelty was an interdisciplinary approach to research on these issues, as well as an applied orientation to solve the specific problems emerging in contemporary economy of Yakutia. More than 50 participants including 30 young people attended in the conference.
The conference materials will be published as a special issue of the journal "Arctic XXI century. Humanities" (NEFU Publishing House). The journal is included in RSCI database and is posted on the website www.elibrary.ru
Moreover, TN established scientific cooperation with the International Laboratory for the Comparative Multidisciplinary Study of Representations of the North at University of Quebec in Montreal.
TN representatives participated in the II International Roundtable on the study of images of the North, the Arctic, and winter. TN leader Liudmila Zamorshchikova presented a report "Yakut literature (image, text, modern interpretation)" at the University of Quebec (Montreal, September 25, 2015).
TN had sent an application to Russian Science Foundation project contest. The project “Landscape ontology: semantics, semiotics, and geographic modeling” was supported financially. From July 2015 in the framework of the project many fieldworks, round-tables, workshops were organized.