The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), founded in 1825, is a scholarly public body working on the principle of self-government, whose main task is the study of science, the publicizing of scientific achievements, and the aid and promotion of research. The Academy, as a public body, is composed of academicians and other representatives of the sciences with an academic degree. The supreme organ of this public body is the general assembly. As the bylaws stipulate, the Academy has eleven sections. They operate committees corresponding to branches of scholarship and special fields of research. The Academy maintains research institutes and other institutions (libraries, archives, information systems, etc.) assisting their work, and extends aid to university research centres. The operation of the Academy is financed by the budget, income derived from its assets, and by foundations and donations. HAS is currently in the forefront of the Hungarian research community's struggle to fulfil the European Union's Lisbon resolution according to which each member-state should spend at least 3 per cent of its GDP on R and D by 2010. Website: www.mta.hu

Professor Gábor Vargyas is an anthropologist with a PhD from the ELTE University, Budapest. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnololgy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Associate Professor at, and formerly head of, the Department of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology, the University of Pécs, Hungary. His research interests include the anthropology, religion, ethnohistory and culture change of Southeast-Asian minorities and Vietnam in particular. He has done extensive field research among the Bru people of the Central Vietnamese Highlands.