From August 5^th to 11^th 2012, the next summer school organized by the HSE Laboratory for Entrepreneurship Research together with the Berlin Institute of Technology and the Netherlands Institute for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship (NIKOS) at the University of Twente (Enschede, the Netherlands) will take place in Berlin. The deadline for applications is February 1^st 2012. Alexander Chepurenko, co-head of the School and Dean of the HSE Faculty of Sociology, told us about the forthcoming event.

The Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM) as well as two continuing education institutions in Moscow and Saint Petersburg have merged with the Higher School of Economics. Vadim Radaev, First Vice Rector of the HSE, told about the process of merging and its impact on MIEM students and lecturers, in an interview with RIA Novosti.

In ‘Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920’ Oleg Budnitskii provides the first comprehensive historical account of the role of Jews in the Russian Civil War.

Sergey Lando, Dean of the HSE Faculty of Mathematics and Head of the master’s programme in Mathematics, told us about some innovations in the Faculty’s master’s courses.

Last year was designated the year of Russia in Italy and Italy in Russia. Nina Belyaeva, Head of the HSE Department of Public Policy, told us about the HSE’s cooperation with one of its key Italian partners – the University of Bologna, as well as about new academic mobility opportunities for HSE undergraduate and postgraduate students.

On December 16th 2011, a roundtable discussion summarizing a cycle of open lectures by Kadri Jamil, Professor at the Institute for Socio-Economic Development Planning in Damascus, on the current political situation in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, took place at the HSE School of Asian Studies.

On December 15th the first joint Russian-American report by the Valdai Discussion Club working group on the future of U.S.-Russia relations was presented at the HSE.

On December 12th 2011, a new ‘Economic Survey of the Russian Federation’ and a ‘Review of Labour Market and Social Policies in the Russian Federation’ prepared by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development were presented at the Higher School of Economics.

On November 24^th and 25^th, the APEC Conference ‘Building APEC Economies’ Capacities of Employing Input-Output Tables for Advanced Economic Modeling’ organized by the HSE International Institute for Education in Statistics (IIES) took place in Singapore. Alexey Ponomarenko, Director of the IIES, told us about the programme, tasks and results of the conference.

On December 7th 2011, an international seminar entitled ‘Russian and European Technology Platforms: Development of Cooperation’ organized by the HSE Research Laboratory for Economics of Innovation took place at the Higher School of Economics.