Research & Expertise

Since World War II, people in many countries have enjoyed a better sense of wellbeing, which has resulted in survival values giving way to emancipation values. Threats no longer lurk at every turn, and each new generation sees more opportunities and fewer barriers to empowerment. The book Freedom Rising by LCCR Chief Research Fellow Christian Welzel offers some ideas on how widespread this process is, whether it is irreversible and where human emancipation can lead.

Martha C. Merrill, Associate Professor of Higher Education at Kent State University (USA), will present at the upcoming XVIII April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development during a section entitled ‘Education in Russia and CIS countries through the prism of global trends’. She spoke with the HSE News Service ahead of the conference about her extensive research on both Russian higher education and comparative research that she has undertaken in Central Asia.

The new issue of Foresight and STI Governance presents various aspects of the corporate sector’s innovation-based development: approaches to conducting Foresight studies, market evaluation of research-intensive companies, intellectual capital’s impact on firms’ performance. International experts assess the prospects for transboundary academic cooperation in the context of global geopolitical processes, and propose an 'intelligent leadership' model for state universities.

On April 11, Dr Daya Thussu, Professor of International Communication and Co-Director of India Media Centre at the Communication and Media Research Institute (University of Westminster) will speak at the XVIII April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development. His presentation, entitled ‘Creative industries in BRICS nations and glocalization of content’, is part of a panel session on Global corporations and local media content producers on newly emerging markets: technological and creative aspects. In addition to his academic role at the University of Westminster, he serves as the Managing Editor of the journal ‘Global Media and Communication’.

Residents of provincial Russian towns put it differently when talking about their towns to Muscovites, foreigners, and tourists from other Russian regions. Such an ‘individual approach’ is spontaneous and may be useful in creating city tourist brands, concluded Nadezhda Radina as a result of her experiment, which involved over 800 residents of Russian provinces.

Leading international academic publisher Palgrave has published the Handbook of Volunteering, Civic Participation, and Nonprofit Associations. The team at the HSE Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector (CSCSNS) was involved in preparing this publication: HSE researchers are co-authors of a number of chapters. 

Several studies have indicated that schizophrenic patients are likely to show high levels of nicotine dependence. Scientists from Higher School of Economics (HSE), Institut Pasteur, the CNRS, Inserm and the ENS employed a mouse model to elucidate how nicotine influences cells in the prefrontal cortex. They visualized how nicotine has a direct impact on the restoration of normal activity in nerve cells (neurons) involved in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. These findings were published in a paper that appeared in the journal Nature Medicine.

On March 5–9, 2017, the U.S. city of Atlanta, Georgia hosted the 2017 Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). Seeking the most diverse engagement in the venue’s multiple opportunities for expertise exchange, debate, and academic networking, a representative team of experts with IOE’s leading research & advisory centres joined this year’s CIES event. Presentations were given by Isak Froumin, Oleg Leshukov, Elena Minina, Pavel Sorokin, Zumrad Kataeva, Martin Carnoy, Tatiana Khavenson, and Andrey Zakharov.

This year’s April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development, taking place from April 11-14 at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, will cover the most pressing issues relating to Russia’s social and economic development. This year, gender issues are addressed in a number of presentations, including during a special session entitled ‘Gender, socialization, ageism’ taking place on the morning of April 13.

While mortality in Moscow is much lower than in other Russian regions, it does not compare favourably with death statistics observed in metropolitan areas of other countries, according to Evgeny Andreev, Ekaterina Kvasha and Tatiana Kharkova, Senior Research Fellow of the HSE Institute of Demography Centre for Demographic Studies.