Less than a year ago, the Faculty of Humanities at HSE University launched four large-scale projects, bringing together representatives of different disciplines from different departments and campuses of the University. Their goals, content, staffing and expected results were presented at a meeting of the Rector’s Council. Other departments have been tasked with developing their own large-scale projects, which HSE University will be able to include in its application for the ‘Priority 2030’ programme.

Digital archives and electronic versions of manuscripts are essential to the work of modern-day philologists, linguists, and literary scholars. The possibilities that digitization opens up to researchers were the focus of the second international conference of early career researchers of Russian literature. The conference had the theme of ‘Text as DATA: The Manuscript in the Digital Space’ and was hosted by the HSE Faculty of Humanities.

Before the seminar "Selected African American Poets from Harlem Renaissance to Our Present Time" as part of the project Colloquium+, Professor Alexandra Nagornaya interviewed Professor Yasser K. R. Aman.

On March 19-20, 2021, the 6th Annual Russian Comics Conference “The World of Comics” (Mir Komiksov) was held in online format, organized by the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies of the National Research University 'Higher School of Economics'.

Using 3D-modelling, researchers of HSE and the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) have restored and deciphered an ancient literary monument of North-Eastern Ancient Rus — inscriptions about the murder of Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky written in 1175–1176 on a wall of the cathedral in Pereslavl-Zalessky. The study was published in Slověne = Словѣне. International Journal of Slavic Studies.

On March 16, the HSE Madelstam Centre together with Vladimir Dal State Literature Museum opened a museum dedicated to poet Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadezhda. Below, HSE News Service talks about the exposition ‘Mandelstam Street: Osip and Nadezhda’.

The recently launched Master's Programme in Medieval Studies is the only Master’s degree in Russia fully dedicated to medieval studies. HSE News Service spoke with Juan Sota, a second-year student of the programme, about its unique features, interacting with professors, and his research interests and aspirations.

Psycholinguists from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain found that when reading, people are not only able to predict specific words, but also words’ grammatical properties, which helps them to read faster. Researchers have also discovered that predictability of words and grammatical features can be successfully modelled with the use of neural networks. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

On February 9, the HSE International Laboratory 'Russia’s Regions in Historical Perspective' hosted Janet Hartley (London School of Economics), who presented her recent monograph The Volga: A History of Russia’s Greatest River. The presentation was part of a joint lecture series between the Laboratory and The Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation. HSE news service spoke with Janet Hartley about her interest in Russia, her experience travelling and doing research in Russia, and the books she has written on Russia.

HSE and the Voznesensky Center team up to stage a play based on a banned 1970 production by Yuri Lyubimov

Researchers trying to compare economic data of the USSR and capitalist countries face questions of the comprehensiveness, accessibility, and reliability of data on Soviet economic production and growth. At an online seminar hosted by the HSE University International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences, Assistant Professor Ilya Voskoboynikov (Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE University) presented an overview of available approaches to studying the absolute size of the Soviet economy and its growth rates.

Anatoly Vishnevsky, HSE Distinguished Professor and Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, died  at the age of 85. Levada Centre Director Lev Gudkov, writer Denis Dragunsky, and film maker Andrey Smirnov describe Vishnevsky’s contributions to demography and social history in a film by the HSE School of Art and Design.

HSE University now ranks 16th and places among the top 5% of universities in emerging Europe and Central Asia in the QS EECA University Rankings released by the British ranking agency QS.

Lev Manovich, Presidential Professor of computer science at the City University of New York and author of works on digital culture and new media, was one of the first foreign scholars to start remote work with HSE students this academic year. He is leading a project seminar at the Faculty of Humanities for students of the Bachelor’s programme in Cultural Studies.

This November, Jorge Luis Méndez Martínez, Research Assistant at the HSE International Laboratory for Logic, Linguistics and Formal Philosophy presented his report on Acoustic Mereotopolgy at the research seminar ‘From the Logical Point of View’. HSE News Service has talked to Mr Méndez Martínezabout his research interests and living and working in Moscow.

International experts have recognised Harvard University as the best in the world in terms of reputation. Moscow State University was ranked 37th, while HSE University entered the Times Higher Education (THE) World Reputation Rankings 2020, within the 151-175 range, taking fifth position among Russian universities, showing a commendable result for such a young institution.

In October, Professor Holger Kusse, Leading Research Fellow of the International Laboratory for the Study of Russian and European Intellectual Dialogue lectured at the seminar ‘West and East: The Universalism of Culture’. We spoke with Holger Kusse about his work in Germany and Europe, his research, and his plans for the 2020-2021 academic year.

One of the most charming HSE buildings now has its own account

In-person classes will be held no more than three days a week

Daria Khlevnyuk, a postdoc fellow of the Institute and a co-founder of the PoSoCoMeS, took an active part in the conference's organization. The conference was attended by researchers of the Institute, Alisa Maksimova and Boris Stepanov.