A meeting of the Scientific Council was held dedicated to the report on the scientific and scientific-organizational activities of the Institute of Folklore of ANAS for 2025. Presenting the report, Director of the Institute of Folklore Doctor of Sciences in Philology Hikmat Guliyev noted that during 2025 year 12 scientific departments of the Institute carried out 4 research works covering 9 topics in 63 problem areas.

At the same time the director noted that in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan “On Approval of the Concept of Digital Development in the Republic of Azerbaijan” the Department of Digital Folklore and Netnographic Analysis was established at the Institute of Folklore by the decision of the Presidium of ANAS. Multidisciplinary scientific research was carried at the institute and the diploma of Doctor of Science was obtained based on the defense of the dissertation on the topic “Internet folklore: theoretical-methodological context and folkloric meaning creation”, the PhD thesis on the theme “Folk Idioms in the Context of Electronic Information Culture” was defended.

The Institute of Folklore has carried out important work in the field of collecting, researching and publishing the intangible cultural heritage of Karabakh and the Eastern Zangezur. The books “Zangezur Folklore: From Poetic Words to Social Meaning”, “Artistic and Semantic Features of Karabakh Folklore” and “Ashiq Abdullah” by Salman Mumtaz have been published.

One of the most important areas of activity of the Institute in recent years has been large-scale research on the collection and analysis of the Western Azerbaijani folklore. Numerous folklore samples from the Western Azerbaijanis living in various regions of the republic were collected and volumes 5 and 6 of the series “The Western Azerbaijani Folklore” were published. Hikmet Guliyev also noted that strengthening relations with the Turkic world and holding international scientific events were among the priorities of the institute. He mentioned that memorandums of understanding on scientific cooperation were signed among the Institute of Folklore and the Yunus Rajabi Uzbek National Institute of Musical Art in Tashkent, Urgench State University and the Alisher Navoi State Literary Museum of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

The director said that this year 51 books (including 14 in abroad), 31 of which are monographs, have been published by the employees of the Folklore Institute. In total, in 2025 about 45 scientific articles were published by the Institute of Folklore employees both in the country and abroad, a total of 260 scientific articles were published. This year, 151 new articles were published in scient-metric databases, and the scientific works of the institute received 3,632 citations and 375 citations in the current year.