Our mission is to promote the discovery of Albanian and Protestant history and thought.
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The Protestant movement among the Albanians is one of the richest and least-researched fields of Albanian history. In the summer of 2014 several researchers collaborated to establish an institute to share knowledge, make our findings accessible to the world, and encourage new studies.
We love discovery because it informs and inspires. Therefore we research — whether skimming through musty books in a bookshop basement, scouring university archive collections, or scrolling through online search engines. But discovery is pointless without sharing, so we publish what we find or show you where to look.
We promote Albanian and Protestant research. Our founders created the institute based on their common research of the Albanian Protestant movement. However, we recognize this niche is interconnected to many other disciplines, including general Albanian and Balkan history (non-Protestant) and Protestant history (non-Albanian). So our discovery target is broad:
We are focused on Albanian and Protestant history and thought. We are working with thousands of unknown or little-known documents, full of potential to inform modern understanding of Albanian and Balkan history, the Albanian language, general linguistics, missiology, philosophy, culture, anthropology, theology, ethnography, and more. The actors were real people, like us, with real struggles, like us, so we are interested in both their actions and thought—what they did and why.
This institute comes at a very important moment … The amount of Protestants in Albania is so very small compared to the population, but their written heritage is so much greater than any other … The founding of this Institute is a grand window opening for the Albanians allowing them to see their history, to read their history, to understand their history, and to be proud.
MAL BERISHA, former Albanian Ambassador to the United Kingdom