The Department of History Higher School of Economics – St. Petersburg and the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) start cooperation for student and teacher international mobility in the academic year 2015/2016

The University of Jyväskylä (JYU) received funding from the Centre for International Mobility (CIMO) of Finland in order to intensify international student and teacher exchange with HSE –  Saint-Petersburg through the Finnish-Russian Student and Teacher Exchange Network (FIRST).

The funding is aimed primarily at encouraging student mobility between HSE and JYU providing Finnish and Russian students with possibilities to learn history in a new academic environment and increase their intercultural understanding. During the spring semester 2016 HSE students, studying at a Master’s  Program in Applied and Interdisciplinary History “Usable Pasts”, will get an opportunity to spend one semester at HSE’s partner university in Jyväskylä which is listed among the best universities of the Northern Europe. The FIRST grant provides an allowance of 580 euros per month for the whole study period. The Finnish students are expected, in turn, to study one semester at HSE – Saint-Petersburg in the framework of MA “Usable Pasts”.

The grant also implies the promotion of teacher mobility between HSE and JYU in the form of short-term (4-7 days) teaching visits of historians from HSE to teach an intensive course in JYU. Moreover, the interaction between HSE and JYU in the field of curricular cooperation was supported. The Department of History, the Higher School of Economics in Saint-Petersburg, and the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä (JYU), will jointly develop a new intensive course on the history of Europe-Russia relations in the 20th Century. The course is directed towards students of MA level, both those who will come from Finland (about 20 students) and those who will study at the Master’s Program “Usable Pasts”, but it will be open to bachelor students in history as well as to students from other departments of HSE upon registration. The Russian-Finnish university cooperation in developing a joint course on the contemporary history is expected to increase the understanding of both JYU and HSE SPb students and researchers of the historical dimensions of Russia-EU relations especially on a lower institutional, experts and grass-roots level and of the strategies of different groups on both sides of the Iron Curtain to overcome the official constrains of the Cold War. The course will be hosted by HSE and taught jointly by the faculty of HSE and JYU (Associate Professor Julia Lajus, Senior Lecturer Elena Kochetkova and Associate Professor Simo Mikkonen). It will consist of lectures, seminars, group work and field trips within Saint Petersburg.

The FIRST is a prestigious Program which promotes partnership and reciprocal mobility of students and teachers between Higher education institutions in Finland and in North-Western Russia. The Master’s Program “Usable Pasts” is currently the only educational program in Russia suggesting the joint Russian-Finnish intensive course in History.