Research & Expertise

The coronavirus pandemic is transforming modern society, reviving old social practices and formulas such as the Russian ‘flat-car-dacha’ principle, while opening new technological frontiers and creating new cultural skills. Professor Vitaly Kurennoy, Head of HSE’s School of Cultural Studies, discusses these issues in an op-ed for Izvestiia. Read the full translation of the article below.

On March 12, a seminar of IGITI Centre for University Studies was held. IGITI Chief Research Fellow and Professor of History at Indiana University Ben Eklof presented a paper "Seeing Like a State? Local Governance and State-Society Relations in Provincial Russia Through the Lens of the School". See the abstract.

At the end of February, the HSE IGITI Research Centre for Contemporary Culture hosted a roundtable entitled ‘Field Studies in Russia: A Country Familiar and Foreign’. Roundtable participants talked about field work methods and standards, research challenges, and ways to solve them. The participants also discussed the extent to which it is possible to apply international experiences and approaches to field work in Russia as well as ways to study Russia from within and without.

From a northern village to an academic article, or How many linguists do you need to describe variation in Russian dialect?

On 12-13 February Jan Surman participated in a conference "Polish-German History. A New Historiographical Field and its Contribution to the History of Europe", which was organised in Paris by the German Historical Institute and the Centre for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

On February 7, Professor Marcus Levitt (Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Southern California, USA) visited the Faculty of Humanities to give a lecture about Mikhail Chulkov’s The Comely Cook. In his lecture, Professor Levitt examined the novel within the context of eighteenth-century Russian culture and, in particular, the tradition of ‘lubok’ literature.

The Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and the School of Linguistics are organizing an International Summer School on Areal Linguistics and Languages of Russia.

Michele Minardi, from Italy, holds a PhD in Archaeology from Sydney University and has spent a number of years in investigating Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan. He has recently joined the team of Centre of Classical and Oriental Archaeology of the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies as a Research Fellow. We spoke with Michele about his projects, teaching methods and expedition plans.

Professor Heinrich Haerke, a renowned archaeology expert, has been cooperating with HSE University researchers for a long time. This year he has joined HSE as a Professor at the recently formed Centre for Classical and Oriental Archaeology. He has talked to HSE News Service about his research interests, field projects, and teaching archaeology.

On 27 November, IGITI Leading Research Fellow Kirill Levinson presented a paper titled "One Expedition - Numerous Perceptions" at the Institute of European Studies at the University of Bremen (Germany).