Have you wondered why certain rituals are still practiced today or how ancient traditions have shaped the Kazakh worldview? Researcher Zira Nauryzbai, in her new lecture series for Qalam, takes us into the fascinating, mysterious world of Kazakh customs around life’s biggest milestones: birth, marriage, and death.

Lectures: 3

Friedrich Engels believed that labor created humans, but modern scientists argue that love, children's curiosity, and long-distance running played a much more significant role in the formation and development of our species. In his new lecture series for Qalam, paleontologist Alexander Markov explains how and why Homo sapiens emerged.

Lectures: 4

Our understanding of our distant ancestors and their kin was formed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Back then, there were no signs of any significant breakthroughs. Skulls, jaws, and, more commonly, phalanges and teeth filled museum reserves, prompting only subdued excitement in the specialized academic press. However, in the 2000s, everything changed with the emergence of a new science - paleogenetics. It gave voice to long-muted remains, unveiled a hitherto undiscovered human species, and provided unparalleled insight into the lives of our ancestors, whose legacy had been preserved solely through bone fragments across the ages.

Lectures: 4

North Korea emerged triumphant from the era of Stalinism. In fact, for several decades, the country established and sustained a society in which state control over the economy, culture, and citizens' daily lives reached a level almost unparalleled in history. However, this society proved short-lived and began to disintegrate after just thirty to thirty-five years. Andrei Lankov, a renowned expert in East Asian and Korean studies, delves into the evolution of North Korea from its ancient origins to the present day.

Lectures: 7

In this lecture series, historian Sultan Akimbekov discusses the formation of a unified country from scattered Kazakh lands absorbed by the Russian Empire against the backdrop of two revolutions, the Russian Civil War and Soviet ‘modernization’.

Lectures: 10

Zira Nauryzbai explores popular female images in the Kazakh epic

Lectures: 3

In the lecture series Medieval Art of the West, historian and medievalist Oleg Voskoboynikov presents both significant and lesser-known monuments of artistic culture from the Middle Ages, offering insights through the medieval person’s perspective.

Lectures: 6

Why did the Star of David become a symbol of discrimination? What did the Europeans think about the sexual relations between the Christians and ‘infidels’? Were Muslims discriminated against in Europe? All these questions and more are discussed by medieval historian Irina Varyash in her lecture series on the persecution of the Jews and Muslims in the West.

Lectures: 5

This lecture series by historian and medievalist Oleg Voskoboynikov delves into the worldview of the Middle Ages, exploring themes such as love and family dynamics, the role of women in a predominantly patriarchal society, the daily routines frequently disrupted by wars, and the concept of 'otherness' in medieval Europe.

Lectures: 5

In this series of lectures, Rustam Shukurov, a Byzantinist, Iranologist, and Turkologist, narrates the story of how Byzantium encountered, clashed with, and formed alliances with the Turks, ultimately meeting its demise at their hands.

Lectures: 8