At the Institute for the Study of Nationalities (Polish: Instytut Badan Spraw Narodowosciowych, IBSN) board meeting held on September 17, 1931, a decision was taken to establish the Seminar for the Study of Nationalities (Polish: Seminarium Narodowosciowe, SN) within the framework of this institution. It was believed that starting an educational programme would enable to quickly create a group of young specialists, scientists and broadly defined administrative officers characterized by their understanding of and openness to, national minorities issues in Poland, both in the national and Promethean concept. The one year curriculum of the Seminar (SN) included lectures and seminar activities during which its participants were obliged to present the results of their own inquiries carried out with the assistance of the lecturers in the form of papers. In 1938 the SN's Graduates Circle was set up to enable the former students of the SN to continue their ethnic research which had already been started.
In 1934, Jozef Obrebski commenced his collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Nationalities (IBSN) in Warsaw, which he successfully continued until World War II. Under the auspices of the IBSN and its associates, Obrebski developed a broad range of academic activities which included his fieldwork in the region of Polesie in Eastern Poland in 1934-1937. This project resulted in a series of articles by Obrebski in major Polish journals; two of these, 'The Ethnic Problem of Polesie' and 'The Present Inhabitants of Polesie', appeared in 'Sprawy Narodowościowe', a bi-monthly published by the Institute. Moreover, within the framework of this institution, Obrebski delivered a series of lectures on 'Static and Dynamic Approaches in Ethnic Studies', and, as its representative, participated in major meetings of sociologists in pre-war Poland. In 1936, he was nominated member of the Institute, alongside many eminent personalities. The period between 1934 and 1939 occupies a prominent place in Obrebski's career, by virtue of his achievements in ethnography and sociology, in particular. It brought him recognition based on his most significant study of Polesie, done in collaboration with the Warsaw Institute.
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