Mission
Objectives:
The Chair serves as a medium-scale centre of conducting interdisciplinary advanced studies of fundamental dimensions of intercultural and interfaith dialogue, on both the national and the international planes, as well as a focal point for the implementation of cultural strategy of UNESCO, especially in the field of rapprochement of cultures, primarily in the Russian Federation and the neighboring countries. Its mission includes serving as a monitoring centre of problems and perspectives, good practices and novel tactics, elaborated in the realm of the contemporary intercivilizational, intercultural, and interfaith dialogue, as well a platform for discussion, consultation and teaching.
Current Areas of Activity
• Improving strategies of conducting cross- and inter-cultural dialogues, aimed at withstanding any forms of discrimination or violence, securing creative practices existing in the framework of traditional cultures, and contributing to amplification of global culture of peaceful co-existence and sustainable development;
• promoting strategies of conducting inter- and multireligious dialogues, directed at appeasement of open or latent contradictions, frictions or, conflicts between adherents of different religious and/or spiritual practices, introducing values of the respective subcultures into comparative scientific research and societal debate;
• elaborating transdisciplinary methodologies, regarded as indispensable tools of conducting creative and innovative dialogue beyond traditionally defined and delimited borders between different scientific and/or philosophical disciplines, religious and/or spiritual doctrines, as well as different forms of social activism and inter-communal discourse.
Future Activities
• Elaborating optimal strategies of interfaith dialogue based upon values of shared cultural and natural heritage;
• developing strategies and tactics of interfaith dialogue opposed to religious radicalism and promoting culture of peace;
• contributing to interfaith dialogue between Christianity and Islam (primarily Suni and Shi‘a), especially in the framework of the Russian Federation and neighboring countries.
