Themenkreise

This is an important book which will greatly aid readers in their knowledge of Central Asia, one of the crucial regions in the contemporary world. It contains papers reflecting the interdisciplinary quality of recent research carried out in many academic institutions dealing with the region. In this volume, which undertakes the supreme challenge of understanding this vast area of Eurasia, acknowledged experts offer their findings on such important topics as history, archaeology, sociology, anthropology, language, literature, religion, philosophy, civil society and human rights, political science, economics and the environment. This collection undoubtedly constitutes a key gateway to study of the region through the advanced, accurate and scholarly information required by contemporary academia.

Über den Autor und weitere Mitwirkende

Jadwiga Pstrusinska specializes in the sociolinguistics and culture of the Hindukush region. She spent several years in Afghanistan in the 1970s, 1985-89 at Oxford University, and 1995 as a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth. She is the author of the books Pashto au Dari: Selections for Studying the Official Languages of Afghanistan and their Literature (1985), Afghanistan 1989 in Sociolinguistic Perspectives (1990), Old Celtic Cultures from the Hindukush Perspective (1999) and On the Secret Languages of Afghanistan and their Speakers (2004). At present she is head of the Department of Interdisciplinary Eurasiatic Research, Jagiellonian University, Cracow and full professor at the Department of Oriental Studies, Warsaw University. Tomasz Gacek is a researcher and lecturer at the Jagiellonian University, Cracow. He specializes in the Middle Iranian languages and Tajik Persian. He has published the first complete translation of a Middle Persian text into Polish (Ksiega czynow Ardaszyra syna Papaka, 2006) and a number of articles on the Tajik vocabulary (eg. Computer Terminology in the Tajik Language, Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia, 2007).