Research & Expertise

The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, one of the oldest universities in Germany, hosted a three-day workshop on social network analysis of literary texts conducted by Daniil Skorinkin, Lecturer at the School of Linguistics, and Frank Fischer, Associate Professor at the School.

On October 7-11 the international conference ‘Reviving Visions: Artists and Scholars that Connected East and West’ marking the launch of a joint MA programme between HSE, the University of Cologne and the University of Warsaw, was held in Cologne. Students and staff from the HSE School of Philology took part in the event.

On Monday, October 3, two professors of anthropology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Heather Paxson and Stefan Helmreich – delivered a seminar for students of HSE St. Petersburg Master's programme in Applied and Interdisciplinary History. A presentation by Professor Paxson focused on how the microbiopolitics of cheese making in the U.S. presupposed and promoted industrial methods and standards and how in recent decades interest in producing and consuming artisanally made, raw-milk cheese has risen dramatically.

The ninth issue of Higher Education in Russia and Beyond, a journal that highlights current educational trends from Russia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, has just been published.

Szymon Jankiewicz, Director of the Center for Applied Legal Research, and Nadezhda Knyaginina, Analyst of the Center, took part in an International Conference, ‘Development of Russian Law-IX: Russian Law and Globalization’,  held on October 6-7, 2016, at the University of Helsinki.

Despite the economic crisis, Western multinational corporations have been expanding their manufacturing facilities in Russia. Last year, foreign companies launched 63 new subsidiaries in Russia (twice as many as in 2013), and closed no more than ten. This year, they expect to put into operation a few dozen new subsidiaries, according to HSE researchers' study 'Russian Manufacturing Subsidiaries of Western Multinational Corporations: Preliminary Results and Future Prospects.'

Kirill Levinson, Associate Professor at the HSE School of History, has received the Merck Translation Award for translating select articles from Reinhart Koselleck's Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, published in Russian by the New Literary Observer in 2014 under the title ‘Dictionary of Basic Historical Concepts’.

On October 10, the HSE School of Public Administration hosted its monthly discussion series. This month’s event is entitled ‘Stress Test for Public Finances – Policy-Responses to the Financial and Economic Crisis in the OECD’ and was led by Prof. Dr. Uwe Wagschal of the University of Freiburg (Germany). Professor Wagschal's talk focused on the consequences of massive monetary and fiscal stimulus for the public purse and will compare the fiscal packages in 28 OECD-countries aimed at combating an economic downturn following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The human factor, a reluctance to scare investors and the absence of tangible rewards for predicting recessions are some of the reasons why professional forecasters sometimes fail to signal economic downturns. In their study, Sergey Smirnov and Daria Avdeeva found evidence indicating that professional forecasters tend to hold on to optimistic scenarios for too long.

On September 30 - October 1, 2016,  an international Semantics & Pragmatics Workshop was held at HSE. The event was organized by the School of Linguistics, the School of Philosophy and the Formal Philosophy Research Group.