Homepage for UWB Portal News

Expanding existing research and academic cooperation, as well as creating internship opportunities for students and academics, are the main goals of the new partnership between the University of West Bohemia and Karaganda Buketov University (KBU). The agreement, previously signed by the Kazakh partner, was formally confirmed in Pilsen on 26 June by UWB Rector Miroslav Lávička. Over the past year, the two universities have collaborated in Kazakhstan on research into the remains of Soviet forced labor camps dating from the 1930s to the 1950s. They now intend to extend their cooperation to additional fields.

“Our universities have a great deal in common. We therefore want to deepen our cooperation, not only in the humanities, but also, for example, in the field of IT,” said KBU Rector Nurlan Dulatbekov during the signing ceremony in Pilsen. Pavel Novák, Vice Dean for Research at UWB’s Faculty of Applied Sciences, also sees strong potential for new joint initiatives: “So far, we have discussed opportunities in physics. KBU has a major grant focused on sustainability and environmental issues, and our experts could also contribute to that project.”

Both universities also see significant potential for expanding their cooperation in the humanities. “We are planning to collaborate in areas such as social work, political science, and a range of topics related to history. There are also many opportunities for student exchanges and internships, for example, through credit mobility programs,” said Tereza Šlehoferová, Dean of UWB’s Faculty of Arts. She has already begun discussing possible initiatives with her counterpart from Karaganda, Anara Makatova, Dean of KBU’s Faculty of Philosophy and Psychology.

The cornerstone of the partnership between UWB and KBU is already their joint archaeological research in the Kazakh steppe. Since autumn 2025, archaeologists from both universities have been uncovering the history of Steplag, a complex of Gulag forced labor camps that operated from the 1930s to the 1950s. We covered the project’s progress in an earlier article. During the meeting in Pilsen, Tereza Šlehoferová formally confirmed the continuation of the project by signing the cooperation agreement. The Faculty of Arts archaeological team and the experts from Gulag.cz will return to Kazakhstan at the end of August for the next phase of fieldwork.

“We will begin research at the Terekti site, where the camp has been preserved so well that no excavation will be necessary. We will document what is still visible on the surface, collapsed fence posts with barbed wire still attached, the remains of guard towers, the foundations of prison barracks, and more. There are also many objects once used by the prisoners, which will give us valuable insight into their everyday lives,” said Pavel Vařeka, head of the research project and the Department of Archaeology at the Faculty of Arts. At this stage of the project, he and his team plan to create a comprehensive catalog of the individual Steplag camps.

According to Vařeka, while Kazakh researchers have focused primarily on the historical aspects of the camps, the Pilsen archaeologists are the first to focus on their material remains. Their goal is to create an interactive map showing the exact locations of the camps, what has survived at each site, and the artifacts discovered there, including prisoners’ personal belongings. “There were also Czechoslovak prisoners held in these camps, so this history is deeply connected to our own past,” Vařeka added. Archaeological research in Kazakhstan is part of the long-term project Wild Land: An Archaeological and Transdisciplinary Study of Resilience Strategies in the 20th Century.