Andrey A. Iserov

On October 22, 2025, HSE University hosted an open meeting with representatives of the Chinese news agency Xinhua, led by Sun Zhiping, Chief of Staff to the Director General. Participants discussed current challenges in journalism and the operational specifics of news agencies in today’s media landscape. Many students took the opportunity to ask questions and practise speaking Mandarin. The visit was organised by the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs in collaboration with the HSE Institute of Media and the TASS news agency.

On February 6, the School of Regional Studies at the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs of the HSE University in collaboration with the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and with the support of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, held an international round table titled“The Current Situation in the World and the Middle East: Key Trends and Pressing Issues.”

In mid-April 2024 representatives of several leading universities in China visited HSE University in Moscow. A delegation from Dalian University of Foreign Languages (DUFL), led by Rector Liu Hong, came to sign a cooperation and exchange agreement, while representatives of Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), led by Board Member and Vice President Chao Qiuling, discussed expanding potential areas of interaction within the existing cooperation and exchange agreement.

HSE Vice Rector, Head of the BRICS Expert Council–Russia and Co-chair of the BRICS Civil Forum Victoria Panova, and Dean of the HSE Faculty of Humanities and Chair of the Contest Jury Felix Azhimov, announced the primary objectives of the contest, its format and potential participants during a press conference at TASS. Nationals from the BRICS countries, aged 18 to 45, are eligible to apply for participation in the contest. The jury will select ten winners, three of whom will be given the opportunity to attend the BRICS Civil Forum in Moscow in person.

The English-language course ‘Europe and the World, ca. 1500 to 1914’ has launched on Coursera. Its author, Andrey Iserov, Deputy Dean for International Affairs at the HSE Faculty of Humanities, examines a historical span of four centuries during which European states reached the peak of their economic, military, and political power. Students of the course will learn how the independence of Hispanic America by the mid-1820s influenced China, what caused the religious schism in Western Christianity in the 16th century, and how European colonial policy developed.

An international school of young historians, ‘Russian – Polish Entangled History: Scientific Reconstruction and Reflection in the Collective Memory’, took place in April at the School of History (HSE Moscow). Undergraduate and master’s students from HSE and the University of Warsaw took place in the event. Alexander Kamensky, Andrey Iserov, Dariusz Klechowski, Director of the Polish Cultural Centre in Moscow, and Leonid Gorizontov, who lead the organization of the Russian-Polish meeting.

Every era builds its own version of the Middle Ages, and the modern age is no exception. Oleg Voskoboynikov, the youngest full professor at the Higher School of Economics, talks about the reason for the popularity of metaphors that refer to that era, why the ‘Suffering Middle Ages’ group on VKontakte [Russia’s largest social media site — Ed.] is not the same thing as medieval studies and how the desire to be different from everyone else can lead a student to study the Middle Ages.