Anglo-Belarusian Society

UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the Ostrogorski Centre and the  Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum invites to the Annual London conference on Belarusian Studies.

The conference will take place on 21–22 February 2020 at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) and the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum in London.

The conference serves as a multidisciplinary forum of Belarusian studies in the West and offers a rare networking opportunity for researchers of Belarus. The draft programme of the conference is available here.

This year’s Annual London Lecture on Belarusian Studies will be delivered by Professor Thomas Bohn from Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany. The title is ‘Bagpipe Player and Painted Birds. Belarusian Histories of the People in the Marshes.’

To register for the conference please complete the online form linked here no later than 19 February 2020. The working language of the conference is English. Continue reading →

Shirin Akiner

Shirin Akiner (1942-2019) came to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of London University in 1965 as one of several ‘mature’ students as they were quaintly known at that time. As I was only in my second year of teaching and more or less the same age as these students I became friendly with several of them. Shirin was a brilliant student, recently widowed with a small child, Metin, after her husband had been killed in a car crash.

She was born to a Pakistani diplomat and Welsh mother, but brought up in a British school and spoke and wrote impeccable English. I got to know Shirin quite early on, as we shared an interest in classical music, although this is a serious understatement in her case, as she had studied the fiddle in Moscow and Amsterdam under the outstanding Soviet violinist David Oistrakh; I believe that after the tragedy of her husband’s death she never played the violin again. She remarried in the 1970s a scholarly businessman, David Mitchell, and moved from Willesden to Chelsea, and became known in non-academic life as Shirin Akiner Mitchell. Continue reading →

The Anglo-Belarusian Society cordially invites its members and friends to join a celebration of its 65^th Anniversary, organised with the participation of the Association of Belarusians in Great Britain.

On Saturday, 16 March 2019 an Annual General Meeting of the Anglo-Belarusian Society will be held at 2pm at 52 Penn Road, London N7 9RR and will be followed by the special guest appearance of a well-known musician and singer Zmicier Vaiciushkevich.

The concert will start at 3:30 pm and will be followed by refreshments.  Continue reading →