Darya Iskusnykh, a third-year student at the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies of the HSE Faculty of Humanities, won first place in the Grammar and Composition category at the 18th Russian Olympiad of Persian Language and Literature. The finals of the intellectual competition took place in Moscow at the Institute of Asian and African Studies (IAAS) of Lomonosov Moscow State University with the support of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

From August 26–29, 2025, the largest annual linguistics conference, Societas Linguistica Europaea, took place in Bordeaux, France. Doctoral students and researchers from HSE University took part in the event. The paper ‘Lability Drift in Modern Aramaic languages’ by Elena Shvedova was highly praised by the expert community and took first place among PhD student presentations. In an interview with the HSE News Service, Elena Shvedova spoke about her research and the conference itself.

On May 30, 2025, a general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) announced the results of the elections for its full and corresponding members. Around 1,800 individuals took part in the voting. Among those elected this year are scholars from HSE University.

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.

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.

The Russian Ministry of Education and Science has announced the results of a grant competition for big research projects. One of the winners is a project with HSE University participation: the creation of a next generation computational linguistic platform to digitally record the Russian language.

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

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

At last week’s Golden HSE Award Ceremony, the winners of the Silver Nestling Award included two international students: Yunying Pei (China) of the Dual Bachelor’s Programme in Data Science and Business Analytics, and Juan Sota (Spain) of the Master’s Programme in Medieval Studies. HSE News Service spoke to the two students about their courses, speaking Russian, and the reactions their families and friends had when they told them they won the Silver Nestling Award.

Language Science Press has published a book on the Mehweb language, edited by Michael Daniel and Nina Dobrushina of the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and Dmitry Ganenkov of the Laboratory of Caucasian languages.

Elizaveta Sysoeva (Doctoral School of History) and Alexander Suvalko (Doctoral School of Philosophy), doctoral students at the HSE Faculty of Humanities, have received grants from the Russian President to study abroad in the academic year 2017/18.