News

International trade is an area of conflict and changing standards. Economic leaders give way to new players, and digital technologies rewrite industry rules. The status of world trade and Russia's prospects are covered in a report prepared by experts from the HSE University'sCentre for Structural Policy Research and Institute for Trade Policy.

Radomir ‘Ray’ Mitic just completed his PhD at New York University and will be joining the Council of Graduate Schools as a postdoctoral fellow this coming fall in Washington, D.C. This summer, he received an HSE SemyonovAward Research Internship to research civic engagement among Russian university students at the Institute of Education at HSE University. Last week, he participated in the International Summer School of Higher Education at HSE – St. Petersburg, and now he is conducting field research in Moscow. HSE News Service spoke with Ray about his research, his impressions of the two Russian cities, and his future plans.

University-age students in large cities show little concern for their health and do little to care for themselves. This is the finding of a survey conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Perm.

A team of researchers from Germany and Russia have demonstrated that long contraction of muscles in one hand increases involuntary reaction of the other one. Meanwhile, the time between muscle contractions in both hands decreases. The results of the study have been published in the paper ‘Inverse relationshipbetween amplitude and latency of physiological mirror activity during repetitive isometric contractions’ in Neuroscience.

Basic education as a social elevator, school management stereotypes, student achievement and teacher prejudice — these are just some of the topics covered in the new book (Un)common Schools: Diversity and Inequality. Its authors, researchers of HSE's  International Laboratory for Educational Policy Analysis,examine the subject from various perspectives reflecting on a school’s paradoxes and charms, excellent intentions, struggles and challenges.

When Professor Susanne Schattenberg set out to write a new biography of Leonid Brezhnev,her aim was to show the characteristics of Brezhnev as a ‘human being’ while at the same time analyse him in the context of Soviet politics and the culture in which he grew up.

On June 3-4, a conference entitled ‘Beyond Post-Truth: Media Landscapes in the “Age of Insecurity”’ was held in St. Petersburg. The conference was jointly organized by the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI) at HSE University, the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe at GWZO Leipzig, the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt, and Justus Liebig University Giessen.

Touching different types of surfaces may incur certain emotions. This was the conclusion made by psychologists in a recent empirical study. Previously, emotional perception was generally studied in relation to visual and audial modalities.

Russians have been estimating their general health as better over recent years, and life expectancy has been growing. Meanwhile, Russia is still falling behind EU countries according to this indicator. Alexander Ramonov, researcher from the HSE Institute of Demography, studied the reasons for this.

Russia is one of the world's top countries in terms of wealth concentration in the hands of the richest few: more than 70% of the country's financial and non-financial assets are owned by 5% of its citizens. At the HSE's 20th April International Conference in Moscow, Svetlana Mareeva and Ekaterina Slobodenyuk presented their findings from a study of inequalities in Russia in the global context.