The special issue of EJHR entitled “Laughter and Humour in Communication” was conceived during the conference in St Petersburg, Russia, in spring 2019. The central topic, formulated at first in a rather abstract way, quickly acquired a specific direction which went further beyond communicative practices. Almost all of the authors included make a reference to the origins of humour and laughter in culture, which gives the issue a historical-cultural slant. Instead of seeing humour primarily as a communicative tool with a focus on its functional perspective, humour in the published articles appears as an independent phenomenon that has a formational, organising and uniting function for other cultural practices.