Research & Expertise

The annual conference of NESEEES (North East Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, New York, USA) was held online on April 30. Laboratory's research assistant Maria Ivanova took part in the conference and had a presentation "Smolensk province after the War of 1812 in mental geography: between symbolic glory and economic marginalization".

Researchers from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain worked with Russian doctors to address the differences between the symptoms of post-stroke aphasia and aphasia caused by glioma surgery. Post-surgery patients demonstrate moderately severe speech disorders that impact all aspects of language processing simultaneously. Understanding these differences will help doctors develop more effective therapies for speech disorders caused by surgical removal of gliomas. The results of the study were published in Brain and Language.

The Linguistic Convergence Laboratory conducts various fieldworks aimed at studying the interesting linguistic features of the languages of Russia. In 2021, members of the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory published three articles on the Russian language in Dagestan.

November 25, 2021 marked the publishing of a corpus of Soqotri folklore texts. Translated into Classical Arabic, the texts are accompanied by a brief introduction explaining the basic principles of the Soqotri writing system, which is based on the Arabic orthography. The authors of the book are Soqotri native speakers Ahmed Isa al-Daarhi, Isa Gumaan al-Daarhi, and Maysoon Mohammed Aldarhi. It was published by Maria Bulakh and Leonid Kogan under the editorship of Prof. Vitaly Naumkin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The publication was supported by the UAE Embassy in Moscow.

On December 3, Research Assistants of the Center for Language and Brain - Militina Gomozova, Semen Kudriavtsev and Alina Minnigulova - made poster presentations at the ABC'21 conference: Language and Cognition in Typical and Atypical Development.

Researchers of the School of Philological Studies and the Laboratory for Comprehensive Interdisciplinary Projects (HSE University) have prepared a report analyzing communication between pilots and air traffic controllers, and also the barriers that can prevent pilots and controllers from understanding each other. They conducted their research as part of an HSE Big Project called ‘ Language Practices’ led by Professor Mira Bergelson.

Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Associate Professor at the School of Linguistics and Head of the Master’s in Digital Humanities, took part in the first webinar of the UniverCities and Culture series held by the University Network of European Capitals of Culture and the Network of Universities from the Capitals of Europe (UNICA) on November 17. She spoke about The Digital Tolstoy Initiative, a joint effort by linguists, philologists, and programmers to develop a digital 'semantic' edition of Leo Tolstoy's complete works. In her interview, Dr Bonch-Osmolovskaya talks about the initiative and other digital humanities projects at HSE University

On September 23, the HSE School of Philological Studies launched the third season of its international academic workshop on ‘The 19^th-Century Russian Novel: Corpus, Poetics, Social Imaginary’. We talked to Alexey Vdovin, Associate Professor at the School of Philological Studies, about the workshop’s plans and international cooperation, as well as to Ani Kokobobo, Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas, who opened this year’s workshop with her report ‘Strange Bedfellows – Leo Tolstoy and Andrea Dworkin’.

How can a small Russian research group become a world-famous scientific centre in less than a decade? A special edition of the Frontiers in Psychologyjournal devoted to increasing public awareness of neuroscience features an article about the HSE University Center for Language and Brain, including the successes and challenges of its early years.

This summer, the HSE Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences was reorganized to become the HSE Institute for Advanced Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies. Oleg Budnitskii, Doctor of Historical Sciences, head of the Centre and director of the Institute, talked to the HSE News Service about the new division.