Association of Russian Human Geographers (ARHG or ARGO), was established in 2010 to consolidate the Russian professional community of human geographers, promote the development of social and economic geography in Russia and implement its achievements in practice, strengthen international cooperation in human geography, and restore its image and traditions.
The Association aims to:
- Spread knowledge of the latest scientific findings in human geography and related disciplines, promote developments in national and foreign social geographic research, enable national human geographers to develop, popularize and implement their achievements;
- Support public initiatives in studying the patterns of the territorial organization of society; develop theoretical, methodological, and methodical aspects of human geography; assist in arranging expeditions and trips; conduct expert assessments on economic, social, cultural and geopolitical development, and environmental and territorial management;
- Disseminate socio-geographical knowledge, promote geographical culture; help optimize educational process in human geography across all levels of education;
- Assist in the development of academic relations within Russian and foreign geographical communities;
- Protect professional rights and interests of human geographers.
As of July 2022, ARGO unites 40 regional branches: the Altai, Bashkir, Belgorod, Bryansk, Buryat, Volgograd, Voronezh, Gorno-Altai, Far-East, Trans-Baikal, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kemerovo, Kirov, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Crimean, Kursk, Leningrad regional, Mordovian, Moscow, Omsk, Orenburg, Perm, Pskov, Rostov, St. Petersburg, Saratov, North Ossetian, Smolensk, Stavropol, Tambov, Tatarstan, Tyumen, Udmurt, Ural, Chechen, Chuvash, Yakutsk, and Yaroslavl offices.
ARGO annually holds its academic conferences, known as Assemblies, alternately in different cities in Russia: Rostov-on-Don (2010), Kaliningrad (2011), St. Petersburg (2012), Moscow (2013), St. Petersburg (2014), Simferopol (2015), Grozny (2016), Perm (2017), Barnaul (2018), Kazan (2019), Vladivostok (2020), Izhevsk (2021), Tyumen (2022).
ARGO President: Alexander Georgievich Druzhinin, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, Full Professor, Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don) and Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow).