Alina Russkih

The Centre for the Study of Native Languages at Dagestan State University (DSU) is actively engaged in researching the many languages spoken by the peoples of Dagestan. The republic has 14 official state languages, many of which have their own dialects and varieties. Scholars from Dagestan plan to adopt corpus-based methods of linguistic research used at HSE University and intend to collaborate with HSE’s Linguistic Convergence Laboratory. The HSE News Service spoke with the centre’s Director, Prof. Marina Gasanova, who is currently undertaking a research placement at HSE University.

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 October 1-2, the fourth retreat seminar of the Society of Field Linguists took place, organized jointly by the staff of the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and the Institute for Linguistic Studies (RSA).

Four young scientists competed in the second semi-final of the fifth season of HSE University Science Battles, which was held at HSE Cultural Centre. What tasks lead students to cheat on exams, how babies learn to talk, whether artificial intelligence is subject to copyright, how to deal with false modesty — each researcher presented their work while the audience and the jury chose a winner to compete for the main prize of the season — an academic travel grant.