In September, the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, an interdisciplinary unit inside the HSE Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, held a seminar on ‘Analysing “informal” practices in (digital) cultural economies’. Delivered by Dr Ellen Rutten, Professor of Literature at the University of Amsterdam, the seminar focused on terms that allow us to more consciously talk about modern cultural economies. In an interview with the HSE News Service following her seminar, Dr Rutten spoke about Sublime Imperfections project, her other current research work, and ongoing collaboration with HSE.
The 7th Moscow International Forum ‘Open Innovations.’ which took place from October 15 – 17 in Skolkovo, included an exhibition on the results of research carried out by academic institutions, small enterprises and leading universities, including HSE.
Researchers from the Higher School of Economics and KU Leuven have developed a method of measuring growth in students’ proficiency in digital learning environments. It helps to see the progress of online course participants in dynamics, i.e., to understand how students study and how the course works. The results of the study have been published in the journal Behaviour Research Methods.
Researchers from the Higher School of Economics and the Turner Scientific and Research Institute for Children’s Orthopedics have discovered that in children with arthrogryposis, the power of electrical activity in the brain cortex decreases, while its dynamics remains the same as in healthy children. The results of the study were published in the paper ‘Characteristics of electrophysiological activity of the cerebral cortex in children with arthrogryposis’.
Due to differences in cultural traditions and social standards, people from various countries pursue different behaviour strategies in difficult situations. For example, some become introverted, while others seek other people’s help. Elena Chebotareva, a psychologist from HSE, compared the coping strategies used by French and Russian students, as well as their impact on psychological well-being.
Benchmark data and the standard of living in the regions of Russia affect student mobility, according to a study by HSE Centre for Institutional Studies researchers Ilya Prakhov and Maria Bocharova. Strong graduates from more educated and wealthy families are more likely to enrol in a university far from home, but the economy usually affects such a decision. High wages draw students towards the regions, while a high cost of living pushes them away.
The National Research University Higher School of Economics and its Center for Historical Research are launching a new research project “Post-imperial diversities – majority-minority relations in the transition from empires to nation-states” (2018-2020). Funded in the framework of the ERA.Net RUS program, the project is implemented by the consortium of HSE - St. Petersburg, the University of Eastern Finland, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at the University of Goettingen. Its overall aim is to study the constitutional politics of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity in the transition from empires to post-imperial arrangements following the Russian empire and the Soviet Union.
Demographers have created a detailed colour map of population ageing in European countries; a collection of demographic stories, it uses colour coding to indicate the varying stages of population ageing across Europe. By looking at the map, you can easily spot areas with a higher concentration of older people, countries with the youngest populations and the main destinations for workforce flows. The map's author Ilya Kashnitsky comments on some of the demographic stories it tells.
Researchers with the HSE International Laboratory of Intangible-driven Economy have developed an approach towards analysing strategies for employing intangibles. In the study, which was published in the journal Management Decision, they discovered that only 36.5% of Russian companies are pursuing an intensive intellectual capital strategy.
Luca Iemi from HSE University, jointly with Niko A Busch from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, have found that the state of excitability of the brain — indexed byspontaneous neural oscillations - biases a person’s subjective perceptual experience, rather than their decision-making strategy. The findings will be published in eNeurounder the title ‘Moment-to-moment fluctuations in neuronal excitability bias subjective perception rather than decision-making’.
