Research & Expertise news at HSE University

Researchers have long studied the motives that inspire people to join in collective action. Three factors have received particular attention: anger caused by apparent social injustice; belief in the efficacy of collective action; and politicised identity. New studies have recently prompted a team of scholars, including a HSE researcher, to incorporate two additional factors into the existing model: ideology and moral obligation.

Their ideas formed the basis of a declaration that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova proposed be signed by the participating countries of the 45^th WorldSkills Championship. The championship comes to a close in Kazan on August 27.

Educators do not always deal with student aggression in the most effective manner. Sometimes teachers resort to severe and unsystematic methods that only make the bullying worse. According to researchers of the HSE Laboratory for Prevention of Asocial Behavior, the problem requires a comprehensive approach: aggression prevention programmes need to be incorporated into educational policy, and, in turn, schools need to foster supportive psychological climate and trust between teachers and students.

While Roscosmos is discussing future manned flights to Mars, NASA plans to open the International Space Station for commercial tourism, and SpaceX is testing its Starship Mars prototype, scientists are seriously concerned about the impact of prolonged stay in space on the human body. While the effects of weightlessness on bones, muscles and the vestibular system are well known, how the human brain copes with microgravity has yet to be fully examined. IQ.HSE has compiled the latest research on this topic.

Europe wants to live in a democracy. This is especially true for residents of countries of Northern Europe, but less so for those of former socialist countries, especially Russia. While almost everyone has a positive attitude towards democracy, people have different understandings of it. Alla Salmina studied the relationship between attitudes and understandings of it using the data of 28 countries that participated in the European Social Survey (ESS). 

‘We tried to give them a bright future.’ These are the words of engineers, construction workers, geologists, doctors and other specialists from the former Soviet republic regarding the years they spent in Mongolia. Those Soviet-era specialists are still united by the memory of trying to build something on such a grand scale and then seeing the whole project collapse. More than 100 members of that community agreed to be interviewed in-depth by political scientist Alexei Mikhalev. Here, he shares information from their collective memory with IQ.HSE.

Airlines use a variety of different methods in order to win their passengers’ loyalty and demonstrate their public prominence. An air company’s social policy, active or indifferent, largely depends on the company’s home region, believes HSE expert Natalia Goncharova. On the basis of her research, the IQ.HSE editorial office determined seven types of global airlines.

This year, the first cohort of the international master’s programme ‘Prototyping Future Cities’ earned their degrees. Among those graduating with honors was architect Anna Budnikova, who invented a unique technology to reinforce karst sinkholes with fungal spores.