On Campus

It was a class in cultural evolution during his second year as an undergraduate at Tufts University that caused Brian McLoone to become hooked on philosophy. A native of Phoenix, Arizona, he went on to complete his PhD in philosophy of biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2016. He will be joining the HSE School of Philosophy as an Assistant Professor in early September.

Ever since she completed her dissertation on ‘The role of the Ecclesiastical Academies in Reception of Kantianism in the Russian Empire’ in 2015, Vera Pozzi, a native of the northern Italian city of Lecco, has sought an opportunity to return to Russia to take her research to the next level. When she saw HSE’s call for international fellowships, she was drawn by the internationally oriented nature of the application and the opportunity to apply for a field like ‘History of Russian Intellectual Culture’, which aligns perfectly with her current research interests. In September, Vera will be enrolled in the Faculty of Humanities, School of Philosophy for one year under a post-doc fellowship.

One of HSE’s newest faculty members is Francis Tyers, who will join the School of Linguistics on August 28 as an Assistant Professor. A native of Normanton on Soar, a small village in the south of Nottinghamshire in England, he joins HSE following a postdoctoral fellowship at UiT Norgga árktalaš universitehta in Tromsø in the north of Norway, where he worked on language technology for Russian and the Sámi languages. Prior to that, he completed PhD studies in the Department of Languages and Information Systems at the Universitat d'Alacant in Spain.

During the annual road expedition 'Cultural Effects of Borders', culture studies students from HSE visited Georgia, Armenia, and – for the first time – Iran. They talked to HSE News about the tastes and colors of Iran, and about how compliments form the foundation of the country's communications culture.

This year, many students and staff of HSE in Moscow will change the location of their study and work. Instead of some sites in districts on the outskirts of the sity, the university is using buildings in the centre. In addition to that, faculty departments which are now scattered in various parts of the city will move closer to each other. This will allow lecturers and students to spend less time commuting.

A mobile app, developed by the HSE School of Linguistics with Samsung and the Leo Tolstoy State Museum won the Runet Prize 2015 in the Mobile Runet category.

The fourth HSE School of Cultural Studies Cultural Effects of Borders annual road trip passed through Rostov Oblast, Dagestan, Kalmykia and Chechnya. On the two week journey, students looked for regional cultural differences, talked to the local people and conducted their own research. On their return they talked to HSE News about the oldest city in the Russian Federation, local variations in women’s clothing and the taste of grilled ground squirrel.

Alexandra Bassel, student of the full-time advanced postgraduate programme at the School of Philology, told the HSE News Service about her internship at the University of Göttingen.

He discussed the new opportunities and challenges connected with the foundation of this large faculty and the general situation concerning liberal arts education in Russia.

Every era builds its own version of the Middle Ages, and the modern age is no exception. Oleg Voskoboynikov, the youngest full professor at the Higher School of Economics, talks about the reason for the popularity of metaphors that refer to that era, why the ‘Suffering Middle Ages’ group on 'VKontakte' is not the same thing as medieval studies and how the desire to be different from everyone else can lead a student to study the Middle Ages.