IFUSCO (International Finno-Ugric Students' Conference) is an annual international conference for and by the students of Finno-Ugric languages and peoples.
IFUSCO conference contains presentations and workshops on linguistics, ethnography, folkloristics, archaeology, history, museology, literature, translation theory, sociology, law, music, mythology, regional issues, education, economics etc., that are connected to the lives of speakers of Finno-Ugric languages. In addition, IFUSCO offers different events related to the Finno-Ugric cultures and the host country.
IFUSCO has always been a multilingual conference, featuring the Uralic languages as well as English, Russian and German. One of IFUSCO's long-standing traditions is the three-language rule, according to which every presentation must consist of three languages – one for the abstract of the presentation, one for its handouts or slides, and one for the speech itself.
Every hosting students’ committee is also presenting a unique emblem of the year's event that serves as a logo for the whole conference.
History IFUSCO was created in 1984 in Göttingen by local students of Finno-Ugric studies, to facilitate contact between other students. The conference was initially a small gathering that mainly served as a forum and as a way of exchanging information. The first IFUSCO had 26 participants from the Netherlands (Groningen) and Germany (Göttingen, Hamburg). Later it has turned into a conference format where lectures are given by and for students.
IFUSCO is organized in a different city and by a different university every year. Since the first conference there have been 41 IFUSCOs held in 23 different cities and 10 different countries. Russian universities have organised the largest number of conferences, eight in total, the first of which was held in 1999 in Syktyvkar and the latest in 2013 in the same city. Among individual cities, Helsinki has hosted the most conferences, with total of five.
The conference has been cancelled twice in its history. First cancellation happened in 2001, when the conference was supposed to be held in Izhevsk, Russia. In 2020 the conference was meant to be held by Riga, Latvia, but got postponed until the following year due to COVID-19. IFUSCO in 2021 was held fully online. The conferences after that have offered a chance for partial online participation.
In 2016 IFUSCO was originally supposed to be held in Khanty-Mansiysk on 7–9 April. It was postponed twice before finally being cancelled. However, the Finnish students of Finno-Ugric studies organized its small version at the University of Helsinki in order to keep the tradition.
Locations and dates +YearHost cityDates1984 Göttingen25–27 May1985 Hamburg1986 Groningen1987 Budapest24–28 May1988 Helsinki22–26 May1989 Vienna14–18 May1990 Tartu1991 Greifswald19–23 May1992 Munich1993 Prague1994 Poznań1995 Szeged1996 Hamburg24–28 April1997 Turku20–24 May1998 Pécs20–25 May1999 Syktyvkar10–14 May2000 Tallinn3–7 August2001Cancelled2002 Helsinki11–15 September2003 Syktyvkar24–26 September2004 Budapest3–8 May2005 Izhevsk12–15 May2006 Yoshkar-Ola12–15 May2007 Saransk15–19 May2008 Helsinki14–18 May2009 Petrozavodsk14–16 May2010 Kudymkar14–16 May2011 Budapest9–11 May2012 Tartu8–11 May2013 Syktyvkar6–8 May2014 Göttingen9–11 April2015 Pécs16–19 April2016 Helsinki15–18 September2017 Warsaw18–22 September2018 Tartu2–5 May2019 Vienna23–27 April2020Cancelled2021 Riga11–12 May2022 Prague23–27 May2023 Turku15–19 May2024 Budapest27–31 May2025 Vienna22–26 April2026 Helsinki11–15 May2027 TartuTBA
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