Eduard Ponarin

Alina Kamanina is a graduate of the Bachelor's Programme 'Sociology and Social Informatics' at HSE University – Saint Petersburg. She has been working as a game analyst in 'G5 Entertainment AB' company for two years. We talked to the graduate about how she entered the game industry, what criteria she used to choose a university and why critical thinking is the main university skill, in her opinion.

In Russia, 2021 was declared the Year of Science and Technology. HSE has always paid special attention to the development of science, and more than 40 international laboratories have played an important role in the development of the university as a world research centre. One of the University’s first such laboratories was theRonald F. Inglehart Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), named after its academic supervisor at the time, American sociologist and political scientist Ronald Inglehart. HSE News Service spoke with LCSR Laboratory Head and professor of sociology Eduard Ponarin (HSE – St. Petersburg) about the Laboratory’s work over the past decade.

Why egalitarian values don’t catch on in post-Soviet countries

LCSR and Journal "Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes" announce special issue call for papers «Happiness and Subjective Well-being in Russia» (Volume 1, 2020). Guest editors: Eduard Ponarin (PhD, LCSR head), Anna Almakaeva (PhD, LCSR deputy head) and Natalia Gashenina (PhD, Public Opinion Foundation – FOM). Manuscripts should be submitted in Russian or in English by the 31st of July 2019.

Celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year, HSE’s St Petersburg campus came up with the slogan ‘Time to Make Your Dreams Come True.’

The Russian Science Foundation has announced the most recent winners of three-year grants for scientific research. Among the recipients are a number of projects carried out by scientists at the Higher School of Economics.

The World Association for Public Opinion Research’s (WAPOR) annual regional conference ‘Survey Research and the Study of Social and Cultural Change’ kicks off at HSE on September 15, 2016.

From September 15 – 17, 2016, the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) Regional Conference ‘Survey Research and the Study of Social and Cultural Change’ will take place at HSE.

Master’s programme in Comparative Social Research was launched in 2014 and has been rapidly developing since. Its Academic Supervisor Christian Fröhlich talks about what the programme offers the applicants and what makes it unique.

On January 31st – February 3^rd 2016, the Winter School of the Faculty of Social Sciences was held at the ‘Voronovo’ Learning Centre, HSE. During the event, potential master’s students took part in master classes, business cases and meetings with students and graduates of the faculty’s educational programmes.

Public misperceptions of inequality; Sanctions hit the best companies; How high is mortality in Russia?; How the type of university affects graduates' salaries; What national pride means; Muslims sharing a Protestant ethic; Economic inactivity among Russians; Russian travellers reluctant to book hotels online; The right to be forgotten; and Analysts can be wrong – these were the HSE's most interesting research papers in 2015, according to Opec.ru.

On November 13-14 a meeting of the Executive Committee and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the World Values Survey Association was held at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. The main mission of the meeting was the design of the master questionnaire for the new wave of the World Values Survey to be launched in 2017. World Values Survey scholars are also participating in the LCSR 5th International Annual Research Conference 'Cultural and Economic changes under cross-national perspective' which is currently underway at HSE. Christian Haerpfer, President of the World Values Association, has talked to HSE News Service about the survey and the preparation for its new wave.

The International Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR) was established in 2010 in the first wave of a competition for government mega-grants to attract major academics from abroad to Russian universities. The famous American sociologist and political scientist Ronald Inglehart, Founding President of the World Values Survey and professor at the University of Michigan, became the laboratory’s first Academic Supervisor.

As the 5th LCSR Summer School on ‘Introduction to Factorial Design and Data Visualisation with R’ came to a close on August 3, participants commented on their experience and shared their impressions.

HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research sign partnership agreement with the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute. The Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) is a social scientific survey research. It was established in October 2008 with enthusiastic support from the leadership of Qatar University and falls under the Office of the President.

It is five years since the HSE began setting up international laboratories. HSE’s Deputy Vice-Rector, Marina Litvintseva, Head of Laboratory for Algebraic Geometry, Fedor Bogomolov, and Ronald Inglehart and Eduard Ponarin from HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research reflect on the results of the work conducted last year and on the achievements of the laboratories.

A week-long training methodological workshop 'Economic and Social Changes: values effects across Eurasia' on advanced quantitative methods in comparative studies took place in April. The workshop was jointly organized by the Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES), Turkey, and HSE's Laboratory for Comparative Social Research. The workshop included presentations by the members of LCSR and EBES, series of practical workshops, as well as reports of the participants.

Students of the international Master’s programme in Comparative Social Research, which opened in 2014, spent their first semester studying at the Moscow campus of the Higher School of Economics; the second semester was spent in St. Petersburg. Another six months will be devoted to study abroad. Mobility in the educational process is an important principle of the programme that allows future sociologists to better understand social reality. The English-language programme turned out to of interest not only to Russian students, but also to graduates of prestigious foreign universities.

Attitudes towards family and sexual norms vary widely across the former Soviet Union republics. At the country level, economic development and the level of religiosity both help to determine attitudes, while age plays an important role at the individual level. Middle-aged people tend to be more liberal than those who are older or younger, according to a study conducted by Sofia Lopatina, Veronica Kostenko, and Eduard Ponarin of the HSE's Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR) in St. Petersburg.

Followers of older, more established religions are less likely to commit suicide than adepts of newer faiths. Factors influencing the risk of suicide include a feeling of isolation from the majority and a belief in life after death, according to a study by Eduard Ponarin, Director of the HSE's Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR) in St. Petersburg, and Vassily Usenko, M.D., Ph.D., from Dnipropetrovsk

On November 10-15, the IV International Conference ‘Cultural and Economic Changes in a Comparative Perspective’ took place in St. Petersburg. Organized by HSE’s Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, the conference has traditionally brought together Russian and foreign scholars working on issues of values, trust, social capital, corruption and inequality in a changing world, as well as the role of religion in political activity and other social issues in Russia and other countries.

From November 10 to 14, the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research’s (LCSR NRU HSE) 4th International Annual Research Conference ‘Cultural and Economic changes under cross-national perspective’ will take place in St. Petersburg. The programme includes dozens of themed sessions on current social, political and economic problems, and lectures by the world’s leading sociologists.

On September 26 twelve HSE faculty members were promoted to Tenured Professors.

Mass gatherings can trigger suicidal behaviour when people experience the so-called 'broken promises effect' when the hoped-for miracle fails to happen, according to an international team of researchers, including Eduard Ponarin, Head of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR) in St. Petersburg, who studied the association between mass events and suicidal behaviour

Elite motorists pose a mortal threat to the public; Russians are blowing their chances of building good public institutions; social media can bury politicians; reasons why our society is morally unstable and why expensive medical equipment is available but unused – these were the HSE's 13 most interesting and relevant research projects in 2013, according to Opec.ru.

Authoritarianism has a future in Russia. In the next two decades, the 1980s generation will start to join the higher echelons of Russian society. But the situation is such that the change of generation of the elites will have little effect on the transformation of the political regime. Or so the authors of research on “The Russian elite in 2020” have concluded

How can we measure the level of happiness or the prevalence of any beliefs in society? Young scientists have mastered advanced statistical methods used in social research during the third summer school of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, which recently took place in Zelenogorsk.

The future generation of Russia's political managers is unlikely to embrace a democratic society, regardless of the protests emerging in the country today, the study 'Russian Elites-2020' shows

Russians are more concerned about material success than self-realization, in spite of a global shift from survival values to self-expression values. ‘Happiness in Russia in Comparative Perspective’, is a paper by Edouard Ponarin, Director of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR)

On November 25^th a reporting conference of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR) on ‘Comparative Sociology in Quantitative Perspective’ was held at the HSE.

In late August  2011, the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR) carried out its first international summer school in Russia. This was dedicated to statistical methods of analysis in sociology, and particularly, multilevel analysis. Eduard Ponarin, Head of the LCSR and Professor at the Saint-Petersburg branch of the HSE, told us about more about this school.