A CONFERENCE on Nicosia’s past, present and future will be taking place on both side’s of the city’s divide tomorrow and on Saturday.
Organised by the Cyprus Academic Forum (CAF), it’s an interdisciplinary conference of scholarly work related to social science and humanities studies and research. The conference starts tomorrow in north Nicosia at Sacali Ev (the ‘Eaved House’) behind Ayia Sofia and concludes the following day at Castelliotissa, Paphos Gate.
The organising committee hopes to facilitate the coming together of scholars, so as to present their recent and current work in their areas of interest. It invites researchers, scholars and academics to use this conference as a forum for collegiate, interdisciplinary co-operation and communication, in all relevant areas (anthropology, education, history, international relations, languages, political economy, political science, psychology, sociology, law etc.).
There will be three themes: the interpretation of Nicosia today, divisions on the ground and in the mind and ‘Nicosia futures: physical and mental’.
A call for papers was published in December 2004 and the interest shown is already very promising for the future events of the CAF.
More than 60 scholars from both sides of the divide as well as from abroad will be participating in the conference.
The CAF was formed in 2003 with the mission of bringing together academics from both sides of the divide to meet each other, exchange views and opinions on their areas of specialisation and on educational matters in general.
Two of its main target projects are to create a databank of all academics in Cyprus, with their fields of study and research interest, which would facilitate joint research projects, collaboration and communication among Cypriot academics (or non-Cypriot academics living in Cyprus); and secondly initiating and organising formal events, related to Cyprus and other current issues raised by its members.
The CAF plans to organise annual conferences in the various areas of knowledge (i.e. social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, engineering, education, mathematics, etc), with the aim of fostering local scholarly work and research.
According to a CAF leaflet, “the city of Nicosia has been the centre of attention, for both local and international researchers for its different and unique characteristics over the past decades. The city, that was hitherto divided and completely separated, used to be observed and experienced in half from each side of the divide. The possibility of observing and experiencing the city as a whole is now becoming a reality with the partial opening of the divide after so many years. New interpretations from different disciplines are now giving way to new findings and understandings of the city.”
