Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is one of Russia’s leading academic centers for the humanities. The subject of the Institute activities is fundamental, exploratory and applied research in history, archaeology, ethnology and literary studies aimed at acquisition of new knowledge on regularities of historic dynamics and promoting enhancement of cultural level of the Russian society, its consolidation and mobilization for the benefit of progressive (sustainable) society.

This multidimensional character of the Institute activities opens up wide opportunities for the interdisciplinary solution of the problems of historical science. The Institute is conducting scientific research in four main areas:

1) Theoretical and concrete historical reconstruction of functioning and transforming mechanisms of geo-economical, institutional-political, socio-cultural structures in the all-Russian and regional context.

2) Development of theoretical and methodic aspects of archaeological surveys, studying cultural-historic and social processes in ancient times and Middle Ages, exploration and preservation of archeological and cultural-historical heritage of the Eurasia peoples.

3) Development of theoretical and methodic aspects of ethnological surveys, reconstruction of ethnocultural development of the Urals in the Eurasian and global context, studying interethnic relationships and updating of ethnocL1ltuгal l1eritage.

4) History of the Russian literature: general national processes and regional peculiarities.

The Institute’s scientific developments are characterized by an organic combination of theoretical analysis and empirical generalization, a wide thematic and chronological range of research, focusing on key issues, a clear conceptualization, and the desire to identify the deepest trends in social development.

The Institute is a recognized leader in the development of the modernization theory and its application to the study of historical processes. The historians of the Institute for the first time in Russian historiography has conducted a study of the spatial and temporal aspects of Russia’s modernizations, their civilizational specifics. A comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms and directions of socio-institutional transformations of Russian society has been carried out. As a result, it was possible to clarify the multifactorial impact of the eastern regions on the national self-determination of Russia, the contribution of regional actors to these processes. Much attention is paid to a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of the industrial Urals in the context of Russian and world history. Significant results are obtained in the study of the Ural metallurgy, as well as political, economic, sociocultural and demographic processes in the all-Russian and regional historical dynamics. The experience of the implementation of the Soviet atomic project as a phenomenon of the «command economy» is summarized.

Ethnologists of the Institute have solved a number of main problems of ethnogenesis and ethnophenomenology of the indigenous peoples of Northern Eurasia. They study the Urals as a crossroads of cultures, communications and mutual influence of peoples in different eras. Archaeologists study the models of life, social stratification and cult practices of primitive societies, analyze the dynamics of the formation of cultural, economic and technological traditions of the ancient population of the central part of Northern Eurasia. The correlation of regional and global historical processes, the diversity of human communities from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages on the materials of archaeological sites of the Transurals, the Middle and Southern Urals, Western Siberia are studied.

Literature studies are devoted to both all-Russian and regional problems. Along with the development of the theoretical history of literature of the XX century and studying the work of individual writers, the Urals literary phenomena are studied in the context of the all-Russian literary process.

The research results of the Institute are regularly included in the list of the most important scientific achievements of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published in prestigious scientific journals and summarized in monographs. To date, more than 300 monographs have been published (including those by the publishers of Oxford and Cambridge universities, research centers in France, Germany, Belgium, the United States), as well as more than 80 collections of scientific articles and conference proceedings. The Institute’s visit card is Ural Historical Journal, which has been published since 1994. The journal is included in the list of Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation; since 2016, it has been indexed by SCOPUS.