News

Academic excellence projects, similar to Russia’s Project 5-100, are common in many countries, but BRICS countries typically have the largest number of universities participating in such projects. That is perhaps why the ranking of the top universities in the five BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – prepared by the QS ranking agency is of particular interest. For two years in a row, 10 Russian universities have been steadily entering the top 50 of this ranking. This time, HSE has taken 37th place, improving its result on last year.

On September 27 an outstanding South African lawyer, judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (1994-2009) Albert (“Albie”) Sachs gave a lecture called "Forging a Constitution for the New South Africa: from Racism to Equal Rights for All", sharing his experience with the students and academic staff of the HSE.

Since 2013, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has cooperated with HSE. This year, a record number of scholarship places will be available for German students to study in HSE short-term programmes through the Go East initiative.

Staff and students of the Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science presented their papers at the GESIS Computational Social Science Winter Symposium, which took place at the beginning of December in Cologne.

On 25 November Deputy Director of HSE St Petersburg Daniil Alexandrov acted as an opponent for a PhD dissertation defence at Tartu University. In many European countries dissertation defence opponents are often colleagues from abroad. To be invited is a sign of respect for an academic and boosts the credit his or her university as a whole. 

On November 10^th and 11^th, 2015, the First Youth International Academic Conference ‘Hard Science Methods in Asian Studies’ took place at HSE in St. Petersburg. It was organized by the Centre for Asian and African Studies together with the Department of Asian and African Studies. The event attracted Russian and international researchers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Armenia, and Germany, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students from Russian and international universities.

The Department of History is pleased to announce an intensive course of Professor Ronald G. Suny, (University of Michigan and the Head of the International Research Project “Comparative Historical Studies of Empire and Nationalism” of the HSE University in Saint-Petersburg) "Russia’s Empires. Thinking About Empire" for undergraduate and graduate students.

On 9-10 October 2015 Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg hosted the international conference “Minorities and Conflicts: Asia and African states in the Modern World”, which was organized by the Department of Asian and African Studies and the Centre for Asian and African Studies. The conference welcomed Russian and international researchers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Armenia, Turkey South Africa and South Korea, as well as students and PhD candidates from St. Petersburg’s universities.

Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages Natalia Tuliakova and Senior Lecturer Natalia Nikitina took part in the International Conference of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature ‘Belletristic Transltion: A Means of Cultural-Spiritual Dialogue or a Tool of Acculturaltion?’ that was held on September 27-29 in Tartu.

Anton Kotenko, a Junior Research Fellow of the Centre for Historical Research, has received the Eugene and Daymel Shklar Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Ukrainian Studies at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute for the fall term of 2015/16.