On November 11 and 12, 2016, Student scientific-practical conference “Ex Oriente Lux: First International Student Conference of Orientalists and Africanists” was organized on the basis of the Faculty of Oriental Studies of St. Petersburg State University.
Young researchers of the Laboratory for Analysis and Modeling of Social Processes, graduate students of the Department of Arabic Philology Vladimir Rozov and Oleg Sokolov took an active part in the conference. Beginning scholars made presentations at the plenary session “Analysis of the color elements of the manuscript relevant for its digital processing” and “Crusades in Arab historiography in the XX-XXI centuries”, respectively.
V.A. Rozov and O.A. Sokolov also acted as moderators of the Islamic Studies section. Within the section, five reports were read on a variety of topics. Among the issues of interest to young Orientalists were: a retrospective social analysis of the genesis of Shiite communities in Dagestan, “Sunni fundamentalism” in the metadiscourse of domestic and foreign (English-speaking) authors, Islam in Indonesia, Islamic banks in the Kingdom of Morocco and Sufism in North India.
The conference as a whole was distinguished by a high level of reports, many of which caused a lively discussion. The conference was attended by 180 speakers from four countries: Russia, China, Ukraine and Israel.
