‘A Sociologist Is a Curious, Searching and Courageous Person’
One of the oldest programmes at HSE University-St Petersburg is the English-taught Bachelor's programme 'Sociology and Social Informatics'. It has existed for more than ten years, and over this time, the programme has helped many students gain interdisciplinary skills and find their own unique career paths. In this article, Academic Supervisor Anna Nemirovskaya explains how the programme has adapted to modern realities, what sociology truly is, and how one can implement a sociological education.
The Programme Today
The Bachelor's programme 'Sociology and Social Informatics' was launched more than nine years ago. Back then, it was innovative as it combined several disciplines and directions. The programme explained how sociologists could use new technologies and methods of collecting and analysing data in light of the active digitalisation taking place in all public spheres of life and economics.
Since then, there have been significant changes in the landscape of the labour market and the sociology profession itself. In particular, this relates to applied researchers who engage in corporate and financial research as well as customer behaviour in marketing. We clearly saw this when we tracked the positions chosen by our graduates in the last three years: each one has the word 'analyst' in it—financial, product, marketing, corporate and so on. With this in mind, we are going to change the programme's title to one more easily understandable to applicants (and their parents) as well as employers—'Sociology and Digital Analysis.' This title reflects the specifics of the profession better.
Sociologists have a vast range of qualifications. We always try to explain to our applicants and students that a sociologist is not just an analyst or a data technician, not a data scientist or someone who codes, creates dashboards and visualisation. It is a person who thinks systematically and can picture issues, tasks and questions, how and when data can be used, how one can solve the problem, where to find data for it or a relevant respondent, which experts are required and which experts from other spheres should be involved. They can develop and design whole projects. Thus, a sociologist is a person who generates an idea: from an issue to its implementation in practice.
To achieve this, one has to study a number of courses offered by our programme. In this regard, we are different from a classical sociological education in Russia and clearly stand apart from that. We teach game theory: a sociologist has to understand how social conflicts work, what group dynamics are like, how decisions in business are made and how clients make them. We have courses on social and cognitive psychology—it's important to choose the right research instruments and carry out different types of tests in qualitative research, marketing and academic sociology, and especially in HR. We also offer courses related to general humanitarian knowledge: general sociology and theory of sociology, data analysis, which gets more complex every year, from simple to more difficult things, and research methodology. There are also blocks of elective courses.
Our programme doesn't have tracks like others. We moved away from such a format due to the specifics of our profession. It is very multifaceted, and students should have a chance to try out different aspects of it and then make up their minds about what is best for them. As students admit themselves, upon admission, most of them do not fully understand what sociologists do. Now, it is not about surveying forms, tablets, or databases. A sociologist is someone between all these things. They are someone who can do everything, depending on the task or context.
In our programme, we try not only to provide students with basic knowledge but also to teach them how to master a new method on their own. Of course, it's impossible to put everything in a bachelor's or even a master's curriculum. You never know what will come in handy in your work. But we try to teach our students how to study. It's very important because even projects at laboratories are very diverse. In some places, they carry out experiments, in others, they analyse large text datasets downloaded from the internet. Some people analyse school textbooks after digitalising them with the help of special software and then build models based on variables created using these textbooks. For instance, some observe school children in classrooms and then turn these observations into data, datasets, and digital models. Analytical approaches are very diverse. Sometimes, our third-year students analyse statistics using more complicated data processing methods which are not included in master's programmes. For example, they are more likely to be used by economists or statisticians, demographists or PhD students. But our students can get a handle on them with the help of professors, online courses, summer schools, and textbooks. They have a basis, and the rest is up to their interest and desire. There may a problem which can be solved only by this method, or, for instance, certain data requires a specific type of hierarchical model, so students must learn it.
Why Sociology?
For applicants' parents, those from an earlier generation, sociology is not always clear because it is a new profession. People come here from different spheres. It is interesting to look at the professors. Why do our senior colleagues have academic degrees not in sociology? Because earlier, there was no such thing—they appeared in the late 80s–early 90s. Many professors came from the humanities: philosophy, even departments of scientific communism and so on; others came from science-related spheres. Among sociologists there are plenty of biologists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. Applicants' parents don't fully understand what it means 'to practice sociology.' What does it look like? It's all because they imagine some kind of phone survey, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of our profession.
The applicants themselves understand it better. Firstly, they read a lot, their worldview is different. They often encounter the results of various surveys, research, announcements, and articles. They can easily adjust to their studies because school education is also problem-oriented and involves working with projects and research in many schools. School students get used to this and realise what they need in order to figure out how society, social economics, social institutions, and public relations are structured. Everything has to be double-checked using data and by observing people's behaviour.
High school students quite often deal with the results of sociologists' work in their daily lives. Many school students often engage in programming and data processing. They take an interest in various courses related to online marketing, SMM, and so on. Now, a sixteen-year-old can tell you things that used to be explained by professors. All these things became available to us through books by Alpina Publisher, MIF, and other publishing houses. General psychology, the psychology of business behaviour, and work in a corporate environment have actively entered the youth lexicon. The work of research analysts has become easier to understand.
A sociologist will always outmatch an advertiser, a PR expert, or a journalist because they can do everything. They can write texts, adapt them for certain audiences, and make them suitable for distribution online. At the same time, they have basic knowledge of psycholinguistics. A sociologist can enrich texts with various specific values, postulates, and worldviews to make them truly effective. They can assess how the audience perceives these texts, carry out the necessary tests and surveys, and edit them. Thus, a sociologist can perform full-fledged support, for instance, for promotional and political campaigns. They are more functional than those with only a philological background or communicative education.
How Students Use Their Knowledge in Practice
During their studies, our students start figuring the profession out and often try their hand at various spheres. We cooperate with numerous laboratories, centres, and groups that use a wide range of methods and work on diverse topics.
For instance, in recent years, the Laboratory for Social and Cognitive Informatics supervised by Olessia Koltsova has been actively engaged in psychological studies of how people consume information, use news, what people's information diet consists of, and how people perceive and assess fakes. They have experienced teams of cognitive psychologists who carry out experiments. This is also part of modern sociology. Our students undertake internships there and work on their projects.
Another example is the Centre for Youth Studies supervised by Elena Omelchenko. Early-career researchers there go on expeditions, work with focus groups, conduct interviews, make observations, analyse diary entries, etc. It's fascinating because many people want to try out different spheres. For instance, in the second year, students go to the Centre for Youth Studies, in the third—to psychologists, and in the fourth—to the Ronald F. Inglehart Laboratory for Comparative Social Research to work with Eduard Ponarin and Boris Sokolov. They create three-storied regression models, work with big data analysis, and programme in R and Python.
Some initially feel uncomfortable working with people and would prefer to engage in desk research. In that case, they can choose a minor course in machine learning and after the second year choose other courses from the curriculum to focus more on work with quantitative and analytical material, which does not require much interaction with people.
One way or another, we teach everyone to work with data visualisation and develop public speaking skills. We teach all the skills necessary for a career as a sociologist, including the obligatory qualitative, quantitative, and basic methods. This means that they can focus on various aspects.
We try to involve students as much as possible in all our major projects. For instance, last year, we conducted interesting research for HSE University involving two ways of studying the dormitories on our campus—how these dormitories are renovated now, what students expect, what public areas should look like, what materials should be used, and what furniture should be bought. There were focus groups and two detailed surveys of those living in the dormitories. We carried out two full-fledged screenings. The students went to the dormitories under construction and asked questions of the developer because there are certain rules which must be followed. This was the administration's initiative; they wanted to find out as much as possible so that it would be truly useful, convenient, and appealing to everyone. I believe we did quite well. As a result, we prepared two large reports.
Career and Educational Paths for Graduates
Our graduates choose various paths after graduation. Some take one or two gap years. They look for options for a master's degree and never settle for anything less. Students used to choose Russian-taught master's programmes nearby to get it over with and start working, but now they behave differently. At first, graduates work in various places and test themselves and their interests, strengths, and talents. Only after that do they apply for the best master's programme. For the last two years in a row, our graduates have applied to several good places at the same time. For instance, last year, a girl who was engaged in qualitative research applied to the London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge, and Oxford. And all the universities accepted her. In the end, she opted for Oxford as the scholarship there was larger. This year, we also have graduates who have enrolled in Oxford. They also took a gap year, prepared, worked in their professional field, published articles, strengthened their portfolio, and joined good master's programmes.
There are graduates who three years ago were accepted into the Vienna Institute of Demography, the best demographic school in the world. Before that, for two years, they had a course on demography delivered by Sergey Timonin and his colleagues from Moscow, the greatest demographists at HSE University. They came, delivered classes, and trained people who also took an interest in this sphere. Some of them became students in the English-taught programme on demography in Moscow, others went abroad.
Other alumni enter the labour market straight away. Now, students are more businesslike in choosing a profession. For example, during the first year after graduation, they work in the UX sphere, turn to financial technologies during the next, and then join the cultural industry. These are middle or senior positions already. They have people reporting to them and good salaries. They move on, it's a new step for them, and they want to test themselves in something new. They go through this challenge within one year. It feels like the previous Career Day, which we invited our graduates to, was just yesterday, but they have already said, 'I work for a new place now. I was at Avito, then VK, and now, I'm at Yandex.'
In my opinion, one of the most valuable things in our profession is flexibility, the ability to adapt quickly. Using data from HeadHunter, we also try to study the sociology profession, look at the spheres in which sociologists work now, and where such specialists are in demand. Having analysed hundreds of vacancies, we saw that these spheres were very diverse. All of them required knowledge and skills, analytical thinking, a systematic view of the problem, and skills in building research design, working with data, processing, visualising, giving recommendations, and managing a team. Our graduates also work in the IT sphere (sociologists are in demand in game development), and various informational start-ups related to culture, medicine and education. Now, in St Petersburg in particular, there are a lot of online schools and courses for school students. Some of our graduates create online courses on data analysis both in Russian and English.
A sociologist can cover the functions of several positions at once: data analyst, course developer, methodologist, and product manager. They can do all these things instead of needing three different people at a start-up They can do it on their own! Often, a sociologist can be a more efficient employee who covers several areas of responsibility.
Wishes to International and Russian Applicants
Don't be scared to test yourself. While phoning applicants or during Open House Days, it's always sad and funny to hear things like: 'It looks interesting to me, and I want to try. But I'm scared that I will fail. What about English and maths? How hard are they?' If you are interested and eager to try, then you can do everything and achieve anything. The maths is not that complicated in our programme. In the first year, we offer two introductory courses which help our students understand how data analysis is structured further. As for the English language, an intermediate level is enough to get started. Students constantly read, speak, and write, and after the second module, they start communicating easily. Even those who struggle with the language manage to overcome it. I encourage everyone not to be scared and to try. A sociologist is a curious, searching, and courageous person.
The international admissions campaign for the 2025–2026 academic year is in full swing. You can apply via your applicant's personal online account. You can also learn more about full and partial scholarships and admission requirements on the international admissions website.