HSE University Life

On January 25 the opening ceremony of the German section of the Richard Stites memorial library was held at HSE St. Petersburg. With the Deutsche Forshungsgemeinschaft (DFG) support and help from Department of History Associate Professor Dietmar Wulff more than 150 new books were added to the library’s collection. In addition to classic editions of modern German historiography and fundamental works on all areas of history, the German collection is in line with the History Department’s main research directions, such as the history of empire and nationalism, and technological and environmental history.

From October 7 - November 12, 2016 a school for undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students organized by the International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences was held in Germany. The school was dedicated to issues of memorialization and commemorating victims of terror and was led by the Centre’s Director Oleg Budnitskii. The trip was organized with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

Second-year students on the History BA programme at HSE Perm have gone on an archaeological expedition as part of their internship. This year, HSE students have joined geology students from Oxford University on an excavation at Mokinski burial grounds.

Participants of the International Research Project 'Comparative Historical Studies of Empire and Nationalism' Alexander Semyonov and Ivan Sablin took part in the 130th Annual Meeting of American Historical Association that was held on January 7-10 in Atlanta, USA.

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.

A photo exhibition ‘Faces of War’, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of World War II has opened at HSE – Nizhny Novgorod. The exhibition includes about 200 unique photographs from private collections and various archives in the USA, Germany and the USSR, showing the battle scenes from the European, Eastern, African and Pacific theatres of war.

On August 3rd-7th 2015, Elena Kochetkova, Senior Lecturer at the Department of History took part in the 17th World Economic History Congress in Kyoto, Japan.

Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, Assistant Professor in History, is completing his monograph 'The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-Alignment'. It is in the process of being published by I.B. Tauris.  The HSE Look  talked to Unkovski-Korica about his topic and the highs and lows of the writing process.

‘HSE is a new generation university which offers many opportunities to historians in Russia. I’m very happy to be here and I feel that I’m working with like-minded people.’ Junior Research Fellow at the Centre for Historical Research Gayle Lonergan talked about her research interests and why she decided to work with HSE St Petersburg.

‘My whole life has in some way been connected with Russia, and not only academically, but also though family. My wife is Russian and our three-year old daughter has dual citizenship. Secondly, I am someone who cannot sit in one place. After about five years I need something different. And the German Academic Exchange Service offers opportunities for teaching abroad, including in Russia,’ Department of History Associate Professor Wulff Dietmar notes about his academic work. Professor Dietmar also shared the secrets of teaching, as well as his impressions from the first weeks of working at the HSE St. Petersburg.

In summer 2014 students from the HSE Faculty of History went for a sightseeing excursion around the town of Novaya Ladoga during their archeological training. They shared their impressions with the HSE news service.

Julia Lajus, Associate Professor at HSE Faculty of History, Senior Researcher, Center for Historical Research, HSE St. Petersburg, Co-chair of the Master’s programme in Applied and Interdisciplinary History and Vice President of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH), spoke to the HSE English language news Portal about the subject of a conference hosted by the Faculty of History at St. Petersburg campus on 28-29 March 'A Usable Past: Applied and Interdisciplinary History'.