Department for Chinese, South and Southeast Asian Studies

Recently, Popcorn Books released the Russian edition of the Taiwanese manhua “ About Cats and the Sea” , translated by Ekaterina Naumova , a graduate of HSE University – St. Petersburg. We asked Ekaterina to share her experience working on this translation — the choices she made, the challenges she faced, and the emotions she carried with her throughout the process.

In August 2025, the research-and-learning group “Minority Folklore and Heritage across China and Vietnam” launched at IAAS, HSE University. Bringing together students from different cohorts and two IAAS degree programs, the group will work under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. E. O. Starikova (Department of Chinese, Southeast and South Asian Studies).

The International Partners Week 2025 became one of the most important international events of the year for the Institute for Asian and African Studies at HSE University-St Petersburg. After five days of the forum, experts in Asian and African studies from HSE University-St Petersburg held negotiations with representatives of 18 global universities from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, signed important agreements and shaped the directions for international cooperation in the future. Professor Evgeny Zelenev, Director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies, shares the results of IPW-2025.

HSE University-St Petersburg hosted an open lesson on the Vietnamese language for students of 'Asian and African Studies' in the framework of the International Partners' Week and the V Festival of the Vietnamese language.

On May 13, the St. Petersburg Museum of the History of Religion hosted a press event to present the results of the attribution of a Qing dynasty Birthday Hanging (shouzhang). The research findings were presented by Vyacheslav Kuzmin, a fifth-year student of the Bachelor's Programme in Asian and African Studies at HSE University – St. Petersburg. His work involved a thorough examination of the museum’s archival materials, translation of the texts on the hanging, comparative analysis with similar artifacts from other collections, and interpretation of the auspicious imagery framing the piece.

At the end of November, the HSE – Saint Petersburg hosted a new meeting from the “Culture Café” series which was focused on Russian-Chinese student mobility. Russian students talked about their experience of studying and living in China, and Chinese students who came to HSE on mobility shared information about the cities they live in, their universities, as well as their impressions of Saint Petersburg and HSE.

Starting from this year, teaching of modern languages of Southeast Asia at our University has been enriched by the study and teaching of Old Javanese which is one of the ancient Nusantara languages. In the framework o of project activities under the supervision of Alexandra Kasatkina, associate professor of the Department of history, students can now get acquainted with cultural tradition of ancient Java and written records of Indonesia from the pre-Islamic period.

In early September 2024, Anastasia Usyk, a graduate of the Bachelor’s Programme in Asian and African Studies at HSE University in St Petersburg, participated in the final round of the ‘Chinese Bridge’ International Language Competition in Beijing, where she won the first prize in online voting and received the Audience Award and the Award for Most Outstanding Performance. She spoke about her experience in the competition, her studies and future plans in an interview with HSE News Service.