A Seminar of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) was organized in collaboration with the Institute of Ethnology of the CAS and the Czech Association of Social Anthropologists on the occasion of the EASA Annual General Meeting on October 14-15, 2015. The seminarMaking Anthropology Matter was intended as a forum to discuss the role that anthropology as an academic discipline and intellectual endeavour plays and could play in the contemporary European public sphere. Some of the themes under discussion were mobility, migration and multiculturalism; economic crises, neoliberalism and human economies; and environment, sustainability and responses to climate change. The event was tied to the current Executive Committee’s priority of strengthening the position of anthropology at different levels across Europe. and Zdeněk Uherek.
Creating a scientific and educational forum for students, scientists and other professionals to learn about, to share, to contribute to, and to advance the state of knowledge in its field of science is the aim of the Organization for Computational Neuroscience, which staged its annual meeting in Prague in July 18-23, 2015, co-organized by the CAS Institute of Physiology and the Charles University. Keynote speakers at the CNS 2015 Prague: Jack Cowan, Wulfram Gerstner and its president Astrid Prinz gave interviews to the Academic Bulletin, in which they highlighted the both the new findings and main open questions in computational neuroscience. This field combines mathematical analyses and computer simulations with experimental neuroscience to develop a principled understanding of the workings of the nervous systems and apply it in a wide range of technologies. Increasingly studies emphasize the circuitry and network function in the brain. Investigations are focused on the changes of the functional and anatomical features in a healthy brain as compared to dysfunctional brain states; thus, studies of the healthy brain provide insights into brain dysfunction, while observations of dysfunctional brain states give clues to normal brain functioning. This workshop explored computation in both the healthy and dysfunctional brain to uncover what each state might reveal about the other. and Jana Olivová.
Questions concerning the 1989 democratic revolutions and the collapse of "real socialism" in East Central Europe were a highlight of an international conference in Prague organized by two AS CR Institutes. The conference’s aim was to historicize the democratic revolutions of 1989, moving beyond the dominant "transitological" understanding of these revolutions in terms of the "End of Communism" and the "Beginning of Democracy." These were questions discussed: "Did these revolutions and the end of "real socialism" signal the end of revolutionary regimes and the beginning of a "restoration," or rather the replacement of worn-out communist revolutions with a new, neoliberal revolution? Or, considering the nonviolent character of the events, did they really constitute a revolution at all?" It was observed that modern political identities and ideological currents are marked by their attitudes toward the pheno-menon of revolution and toward various historical revolutionary models. Other themes were, "Democratic, Liberal, or Neoliberal Revolution? Dissent, Post-Dissent, and the Ideas of 1989. The End of History or the End of the Future? Theories of Soviet-type Society. The Second Life of the 1968 Prague Spring in 1989." Hosting the conference were the Department for the Study of Late Socialism and Post-Socialism of the Institute of Contemporary History ASCR and the Department for the Study of Modern Czech Philosophy of the Philosophy Institute ASCR, held October 2-3, 2014 at the Villa Lana. and Petr Kužel.