Conferences are a major issue in Institute's activities. They brighten up the routine, provide new impetus to research, open up new fields of study and expand the boundaries of research activities.
– Conference of Africanists. The tradition of holding such a conference dates from 1969. The 11th conference took place in 2008. The conference is held tri-annually and is usually timed to the celebration of the Africa Day – in the last week of May – with broad representation of scholars from all over the world and particularly from Africa. The conference comprehensively addresses a wide range of urgent African problems and generates forecasts for the future. This academic project, conducted over the past decades, has become one of the major forums for Russian and foreign Africanists for complex approach to the problems of Africa.
– The International Conference «Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilisations» takes place every second or third year and is organised jointly with the Russian State University for Humanities. In 2009 it was convened for the fifth time. The conference is attended by experts in history, political sciences, anthropology, cultural studies and other branches of science from dozens of countries.
– I. I. Potekhin Memorial Readings are held once in two years in early October and focus mainly on historical and socio-political problems. Special attention is paid to the issues of the national liberation struggle of the African nations.
– The School of Young Africanists is an annual forum which brings together young researchers from among senior postgraduate students and addresses all spheres of African studies. The School is organised within the ambit of the RAS programme «Support of young researchers» in cooperation with the universities of various Russian cities. It is usually scheduled during October or November.
– D.A. Olderogge Memorial Readings, which honour the memory of one of the forefathers of the Soviet/Russian Africanistics, are traditionally held by St. Petersburg State University with the assistance of the RAS Research Council for the Problems of Africa, the RAS Institute for African Studies and other academic organisations.
– The permanent seminar «Culture and Society», which is established by the Centre for History and Cultural Anthropology, aims at contributing to further development of methods of civilisational and cultural-anthropological approaches to academic studies.
The papers presented at these conferences are traditionally published in collections of the Institute's works.
The Institute's research fellows take part in conferences both in Russia and abroad on an ongoing basis.