Saba Safdar, Professor at the University of Guelph, Canada, visits HSE

In December 2017 Saba Safdar (PhD, Professor, Psychology Department, Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, University of Guelph, Canada) gave several lectures for the HSE master students of Applied Social Psychology programme as a part of the course “Cross-cultural psychology”.

Professor Saba Safdar was invited by the academic supervisor of the Applied Social Psychology programme, prof. Nadezhda Lebedeva, together with International Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research to teach a few lectures on multiculturalism policies and models. During her stay in Moscow and as a guest at HSE, she shared some of her insights about the city, the teaching process and the Applied Social Psychology programme.

Being in Moscow for the first time, she was happy to mention her excitement. “I thought it was essentially winter wonderland”, she said, “with all the literally magnificent architecture that exists on the Red Square, but also the decoration”.

But it was not only the city that fascinated her. During her teaching activity she received some positive experiences from working with Applied Social Psychology students. She shared, “My impression now after teaching students and being here for the last 2 weeks is that these are highly engaged students. I was very pleased to see how involved they were during each seminar and there were lots of questions and discussions during classes. And it wasn’t just me giving lectures and students taking notes. It was very much an interactive group that I worked with”.

Moreover, prof. Safdar managed to have a closer look at the Applied Social Psychology programme as a whole. As a lecturer having huge experience in teaching in different universities worldwide she considered the ambition that is put into the programme and teaching process, and also the effort to diversify and internationalize it. She noted, “I was surprised by the extent of diversity of the master students. It is truly an international group. It seemed that at least half of the students came from different parts of the world to study here”.

However, the benefits of the Applied Social Psychology programme were not only related to the programme content and structure, but also to the opportunities that it provides the students enrolled in it. She referred to the advantages which our students have by choosing to develop their career here, “And I think that the fact that students have the opportunity to practice outside of Russia or outside of Moscow – that’s a great thing for any student including those who study here right now. So, yes, it is a very good programme and I am happy to be involved in it at least in this small way”.