Correspondence was the “information superhighway” for s scholars and researchers during the early modern world. The Department of Comenius Studies of the Institute of Philosophy AS CR is one of the closest partners in a project based at the University of Oxford titled Cultures of Knowledge. Between 1550 and 1750, regular exchanges of letters encouraged the formation of virtual communities of people worldwide with shared interests in various kinds of knowledge. Included were classical scholars, philologists, antiquaries, patristic scholars, orientalists, theologians, astronomers, botanists, experimental natural philosophers, emissaries’, ‘free-thinkers,’ and many other denizens of the “Republic of Letters.” Since 2009, the Cultures of Knowledge project at Oxford University has been using a variety of research methods to reassemble and understand these networks. Supporting this effort is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As well as co-organizing the inaugural series of workshops in Prague, Cracow and Budapest, and the 2010 Universal Reformation conference in Oxford, both Institutes have also been active throughout the project in preparing the Comenius catalogue for Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO). and Vladimír Urbánek.
This year we commemorate the 1150th anniversary of the arrival of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia. Various projects have been prepared for this international event. On the national level is a historically oriented exhibition project titled, Cyril and Methodius — their time, life and work. This presents the cultural and social phenomenon of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission stressing its crucial importance for the establishment of the Czech national community. The exhibition presents historical and archaeological items collected during research lasting more than 50 years by the Moravian Museum and partner organizations and connected to the history of Great Moravia before, during and after the apostles' mission. (The saints' day is observed in the Czech Republic and Slovakia July 5.) and Petra Melichar.
The CzechGlobe project will seek to shed new light on a crucial and sometimes controversial environmental problem: monitoring Global Climate Change (GCC) and assessing its impact on the basic thematic segments of the atmosphere, and ecosystems and socioeconomic systems. The project will establish a centre of excellence within the framework of EU structural funds called Operational Programme of Research and Development for Innovations in the Czech Republic involving spatially distributed research infrastructure within the Czech Republic. CzechGlobe project is based on an international research team and partnerships with important foreign institutions, such as Helmholz Gemeinschaft Research Centre Jülich, Germany; Institute for Agroenvironmental and Forest Biology Research Rome, and the University of Zurich. One of the partners in this project is the Institute of Atmospheric Physics ASCR. and Mirka Šprtová.