Balkan International Academy FoundationPublic benefit foundation · Sofia · since 2017
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Research & education · Sofia · since 2017

Balkan International Academy Foundation

The Balkan International Academy Foundation is a Bulgarian public benefit foundation, registered in Sofia in 2017, that works in research and education in the social sciences and humanities. It organises research, seminars, conferences and publications, and it takes part in European cooperation projects.

For two centuries the body’s response to the presence, gaze and gestures of another person has been described, doubted and renamed. We study it again, with the original documents in hand and with decades of filmed observation.

We live surrounded by words, screens and measurements, and yet what decides whether two people trust each other still happens before any word: in a look, a posture, a shared rhythm. Our research gives this old knowledge of the body a modern language, so that it can be studied, taught and passed on.

“In NLP, communication builds the relationship. For us, the relationship is the space in which communication is built — and that space is non-verbal.”
Dr. Marco Paret speaking in front of the European Union and Romanian flags at a psychiatry conference in Oradea
Dr. Marco Paret at the conference “Psychotherapeutic Orientations in Modern Psychiatry” (Orientări psihoterapeutice în psihiatria modernă), Oradea, Romania, 1–3 March 2024. Photo: Raluca Baintan.

Two areas of work

The foundation’s activity rests on two pillars: a research institute that studies one specific human phenomenon in depth, and European projects that bring education and training to communities across the continent.

Mesmerismus Research Institute

The Mesmerismus Research Institute is the foundation’s research initiative: neurofunctional research on non-verbal hypnosis in humans and animals. It works from a library of 4,841 catalogued historical works and from decades of filmed observation. Its programme re-founds two widely used paradigms — polyvagal theory and NLP — on observable function and on the relationship between people.

Discover the institute

European projects

As a partner in Erasmus+ projects, the foundation develops vocational training and dissemination for rural communities, sustainable tourism and cultural heritage.

See the projects

Structure: the foundation runs the Mesmerismus Research Institute and its European projects; the institute works through the Magnetic Library, the Audiovisual Observatory and its collaborators.Balkan International AcademyFoundation · public benefit · SofiaMesmerismus Research Instituteresearch initiative of the foundationEuropean projectsErasmus+ partnershipsMagnetic Libraryhistorical sourcesObservatoryfilmed observationCollaboratorsfellows · translators
How the parts fit together: the foundation hosts the institute, which works through three instruments.

The Magnetic Library in three numbers

The Magnetic Library is the institute’s collection of historical sources on animal magnetism and early hypnosis, the starting point of every research question we ask.

4,841catalogued items on animal magnetism, hypnotism, somnambulism, fascination and psychical research, about 4,050 of them with fully readable digitised text
~660works also listed in Adam Crabtree’s reference bibliography (1766–1925), about 490 of them identified with certainty
13,700+documents in the digital collection, in more than 10 languages

Figures as of 26 October 2026, from the Library’s own catalogue.

How the Library is built

Work with us

Researchers, translators and volunteers can join the institute’s work. Fellowships, library access and source translation are open on application.

Collaborate & apply