The Revival
In February 2013, Ondřej Beránek was appointed as director of the Oriental Institute paving the way for new directions and endeavors. During his leadership, significant changes were introduced. Stronger international partnerships were forged, the international scholars were hired, and popularization was strengthened. In March 2021, he was appointed as Vice President of the Czech Academy of Sciences and member of the Academy Council.
In 2013, five bilateral agreements on cooperation with foreign countries were signed and several others were discussed. At the same time, Oriental Institute researchers were stimulated to cooperate more intensively with foreign institutions, which was manifested by a greater number of active participation in foreign conferences, including lectures at international conferences.
One of the offshoots of partnership is the Taiwan Resource Center for Chinese Studies (TCSIZ), which was established on the basis of long-term cooperation between the Czech Academy of Sciences and 國家圖書館 National Central Library (NCL) and the longstanding contact between Czech Sinologists with Taiwan. TCSIZ functions as an NCL branch established at the OrientaI Institutes's General Library to make available Sinological literature in Chinese donated by the NCL (approx. 500 books per year). Furthermore, it makes all electronic information sources available at NCL and other academic institutions in Taiwan (e.g. 中央研究院 Academia Sinica) - such as full-text databases, e-books and Chinese rare publications database - accessible from the Oriental Institute and its partner institutions.
An important step was the start of research positions for foreign researchers. The first foreign scholars were from Germany, France and Italy. Subsequently, postdoctoral positions were opened.
Oriental Institute scholar Vladimír Liščák was one of the ten scientists in the Czech Republic who received the prestigious degree of Doctor of Science in 2021 from the Czech Academy of Sciences. Scholars receive it as recognition for a particularly high qualification demonstrated by important original works, deemed crucial the development of research in a certain field, which demonstrates a distinguished scientific personality. The title is awarded by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic based on the decision of the Scientific Council of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, which is based on the results of a demanding procedure. A comprehensive assessment of the researcher's personality is ensured by professionally erudite commissions, whose members are specialists from the workplaces of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and universities. The procedure also includes at least three opponents. Such an assessment is a guarantee of the scientific quality of the holder of the title, which cannot be replaced by a mere automatic assessment of scientometric indicators. Liščák defended his dissertation "Brother Odorik and his report on the eastern regions of the world: Relations between Europe and Mongol China in the 13th and 14th centuries" before the General and Czech History committee and received a scientific title "Doctor of Historical Sciences."
In recent years, scholars have integrated the use of digital methods and new technologies. These projects were recently explored and successfully implemented, including those related to language corpora, geographic information, biographic data, text and data visualizations, and emerging analytical tools.