Adrian A. Selin

The editorial staff of HSE University-St Petersburg are looking forward to the new academic year as much as students and professors are. We are sure that it will be very eventful: there are exciting research projects, new educational partnerships and interesting scientific conferences waiting for HSE students. To mark the holiday, we have talked to deans, academic supervisors of educational programmes and research units about their expectations for the next year.

If you attended a meeting with HSE University-St Petersburg at least once, you must have met Adrian Selin, an academic supervisor of the Bachelor's programme 'History' and the dean of the School of Arts and Humanities. Usually, he talks about HSE University-St Petersburg but today, we are going to tell you about him and the job of a historian. Find out what prosopography is, why the Time of Trouble is interesting and why it is useless to look for Rurik's remains in the interview with the doctor of historical science.

On July 10, HSE University-St Petersburg launched the International Summer School—a series of classes for students from India, Vietnam, the Republic of Korea and other countries. Foreign guests will get to know our university, listen to lectures in six fields and enjoy the inspiring cultural programme.

On March 19, the HSE Staff and Student Conference, which was attended by 727 delegates, took place at the Russia Expo. At the event, a vote for 87 candidates to the elected part of the HSE Academic Council was held, all of which received the required number of votes.

The HSE University-St Petersburg editorial office congratulates all its readers on the beginning of the academic year. May it bring you lots of pleasant discoveries and inspiration! To mark the occasion, we talked to students and professors of the campus about their plans for the year—in science, careers, extracurricular activities and beyond.

On February 8, HSE University-St Petersburg celebrates the Day of Russian Science. We congratulate all researchers and wish them continued openness to new discoveries. To mark the occasion, we talked to scientists about the sources of their inspiration, moments of anxiety, and having fun.

The year is slowly coming to an end. It is high time to remember the major achievements of the campus, its staff and students and thank each other for our joint efforts and stamina. Read on to find out about the activities of the campus over the last year. And Happy New Year! May you have enough energy and inspiration for new achievements!

On October 2, the first meeting of the research group was held in the new academic year. Alexander Tolstikov, Associate Professor of Petrozavodsk University, presented a paper "Why and how to translate foreigner's notes about Early modern Russia (on example Peter Petreius's books)".

On September 16-17, 2021, the international conference "Languages of Describing the Social in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times" was held on the basis of the History Department of the NRU HSE of St. Petersburg and with the assistance of the Research and Training Group "Languages of Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Interpretation Repertoires". The conference was attended by scientists from around the world and students of Russian universities during 5 sections held in full-time, online and hybrid formats, 29 reports were made, where the speakers raised the topics of describing various social phenomena in different countries in the Early Modern period.

On February 11, during the session of the Research Group “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” two master students of the Department of History of the Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, presented their papers.

On january 28th another meeting of the research group «Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation» was held.

On December 11, at 18:00, the final meeting of the research group and the research seminar were simultaneously held. The meeting began with the report "?" by Associate Professor of Tomsk State University Anton Kotov. After that the members of the research group discussed the structure of the report and all possible prospects for the development of the group.

On November 13, at 18:00, a regular meeting of research group was held on the ZOOM online platform. The participants discussed preprints' drafts.

On Novermber 2 at the eleventh session of the research seminar “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” a PhD student of Saint Petersburg State University Evgenii Tishunin presented his paper «Ireland and the Irish in the imperial project of late Tudors: mythologeme, practices of describing and paths of incorporation»

On October 2, during the tenth session of the research seminar “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” a PhD student of Saint Petersburg State University Dmitry Verkhovtcev presented his paper “”Latvians” in Livonia, Ingria and Karelia: describing diversity in early modern time”.

On September 18, during the ninth session of the research seminar “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” the participants presented their research reports and created three new groups which will be preparing the preprints.

On June 2, 6 PM on the ninth seminar of the research group “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” Maxim Shkil, Alena Kuznetsova, Daria Zubkova presented a report on the images of the Other in the works by the English diplomat Paul Raycout, the English merchant and traveler Peter Mundy and the Italian cartographer and diplomat Pietro Coppo.

On 13 May 2020, on the seventh seminar of the research group “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” Gleb Paromonov and Julia Zakrzhevskaya presented a research report about peculiarities of the image of Muscovites in the seventeenth century in the works of Peter Petreius and Johan Sparwenfeld, two Swedish authors of profound academic background.

On 29 April 2020, on the sixth seminar of the research group “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” Alexei Vovin, the visiting scholar of National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, presented a paper “The image of the ‘Other’ in Pskov Chronicles”.

On 15 April 2020 on the seminar of the research group “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” Sergey Baigushev, Alexandra Shisterova and Irina Yakovleva presented preliminary results of their study into the image of the Irish in early Stuart sources on the basis of the texts by Fynes Moryson and John Davies.

On 8 April, 2020, the online session “The War of the Sons of the Light against the Sons of Darkness: The Other in Abrahamic Religions in Antiquity ” from the series of the seminars of the research group “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” was held.

Third seminar: topics of discussion, papers, transformation of the notion of ‘barbarian’ in Greek culture from Homer to Aristotle, workshop on Classical sources

On February 12, 2020, Oleg Rusakovskiy, the research associate of National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, presented a paper about the main sources related to the activities of foreign formation regiments in Muscovy in 1630-1634.

Second meeting: what was discussed at the meeting. Reporting activity. Frederick Barth, Rogers Brubaker - Ethnic Groups or Ethnicity Without Groups?

With pleasure, we inform you, that a new research and academic group associated with Medieval Studies will appear at the St. Petersburg Department of History.
In 2020-2021 the research and academic group

At the kind invitation of Prof. Malte Griesse, head of the international research group “Revolts as communicative events” in the University of Konstanz, Germany, the representatives of the Department of history Prof. Adrian Selin and PhD student Kuzma Kukushkin took part in the conference “Receptions and Representations of Revolts in Early Modern Diplomacy IV: Borderlands”, held at the Sixty-first annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Berlin (26/03/2015 - 28/03/2015). The meeting itself attracted more than 3000 participants from different countries. The conference was attended by more than 30 researchers from the UK, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia.

Center for Historical Research started the project "Russian Swedish Border in Ingria, 17th century: Historical-Geographical Study" (Head of the Project - Prof. Adrian Selin, participants: senior research fellow Ivan Sablin, trainee-researcher Kuzma Kukushkin).