News

Altruism based on individual values is changing Western society. People in Western countries have seen a rise in individualism for quite some time, and this in turn helps to create generations of people with altruistic mindsets. Christian Welzel, Chief Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (HSE and Leuphana University of Lüneburg), teamed up with researchers from the University of Lausanne to conduct a study showing the connection between emancipative values and prosocial behaviour. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

In their study Hipsters in Russian Capital and Provinces: Legitimation of Social Phenomenon, Leda Skobeleva and Maria Plotnikova use responses from young people interviewed in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod to construct the profile of a hipster. According to respondents in both cities, being a hipster is a fashion rather than a subculture or socio-political movement. Young people in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod were also unanimous in describing typical hipster appearances and behaviour, such as preference for eco-fashion and organic food, as well as a peculiar mixture of high-end brands and sloppy ‘bomzh-style’ clothes.

Students from HSE ISSEK, Stanford University, and Rice University have researched how Russia and the US cooperate in cybersecurity and explored the nuances present in the approaches that each country takes in this area, including different understandings of cybersecurity-related terms. The research was conducted in 2016-2017 as part of the Stanford US-Russia Forum (SURF), a programme dedicated to developing US-Russia cooperation. Over a period of 8 months, 30 American and Russian students and young professionals worked on their projects.

In recent discussion on internationalisation, the role of international students as main drivers has been rightly reconsidered. The 12th issue of Higher Education and Beyond addresses the importance of international students for higher educational institutions and the change they bring.

Terrorist attacks can have a paralysing effect on stock index dynamics, but market participants can cut their losses by not succumbing to panic.

On May 16, 2017, the HSE Graduate School of Urbanism (GSU), together with the ARTS4CITY project, held a workshop on ‘Looking for Polycentrism’ in St. Petersburg. Workshop participants created an improvised map of a ‘decentralized’ St. Petersburg. Vicente Guallart, Academic Supervisor of the Shukhov Lab (Laboratory for Experimental Urban Design), and Nadezhda Khort, Manager of the Shukhov Lab, took part in the workshop on behalf of GSU.

On May 31, Valerie Kivelson, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, will be delivering a seminar entitled ‘Visualizing Empire: Muscovite Images of Race’. Professor Kivelson is an expert in Medieval and early modern Russia, history of cartography, history of witchcraft, religion, and political culture, among other topics. She is the author of 'Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth Century Russia' and a guest editor of 'Witchcraft Casebook: Magic in Russia, Poland and Ukraine. 15-21st Centuries'.

On May 22, Russian and French scientists met in Moscow to sign an agreement to create the French-Russian Interdisciplinary Scientific Centre J.-V. Poncelet (ISCP), which the Higher School of Economics helped set up.

On May 18th, 2017, an Eco-energy Town Workshop took place in Seoul under the auspices of the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. As part of the session ‘Opportunities and problems of building energy-efficient cities’, Ilya Dolmatov, Director of the HSE Institute of Pricing and Regulation of Natural Monopolies, gave a presentation on ‘Energy efficient cities in Russia: priorities and challenges for the future’.

On May 23, Ellen Rutten, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Amsterdam, delivered a lecture at HSE on her new book, ‘Sincerity after Communism’. An expert on Slavonic literature and culture, Professor Rutten is involved in numerous projects, including the Digital Emotions group, Sublime Imperfections, and ‘Russian Literature’, a journal where she serves as editor-in-chief.