Inauguration of the research centre for Armenian culture in Poland as a part of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Krakow

The inauguration of the Research Centre for Armenian Culture took place on January 21, 2019 at the Collegium Maius of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The Centre was founded on the basis of old and contemporary achievements of Kraków armenologists and armenists. They were accompanied by the constant interest of Polish Armenians – from Kraków, Warsaw, Gdańsk, Lower and Upper Silesia. Such support was invaluable in the efforts to create the Centre, because it demonstrated not only the scientific but also the social need for research in this field. In this atmosphere, in recent years, important initiatives for Polish armenology were born – the magazine Lehahayer, devoted to the history of Polish Armenians, financially supported by the Lanckoroński Foundation, the Jagiellonian University and the Gumiński Foundation (this year, the 6th edition will be released), and a series of archival sources, Historical Monuments of Polish Armenians, implemented under the care of the Foundation for Culture and Heritage of Polish Armenians thanks to a grant from the National Humanities Development Program. In organizational terms, however, these activities were semi-private or, so to speak, partisan. They were institutionalized when the Centre was founded.