Boris Orekhov

At the end of 2022, the results of the Project Competition in Basic Science Research for Intercampus Departments were announced. This was the inaugural competition, and focused on encouraging new research teams at HSE University and developing intercampus cooperation in the field of fundamental research. Here, HSE News Services looks at four winning projects.

Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Associate Professor at the School of Linguistics and Head of the Master’s in Digital Humanities, took part in the first webinar of the UniverCities and Culture series held by the University Network of European Capitals of Culture and the Network of Universities from the Capitals of Europe (UNICA) on November 17. She spoke about The Digital Tolstoy Initiative, a joint effort by linguists, philologists, and programmers to develop a digital 'semantic' edition of Leo Tolstoy's complete works. In her interview, Dr Bonch-Osmolovskaya talks about the initiative and other digital humanities projects at HSE University

On September 23, the HSE School of Philological Studies launched the third season of its international academic workshop on ‘The 19^th-Century Russian Novel: Corpus, Poetics, Social Imaginary’. We talked to Alexey Vdovin, Associate Professor at the School of Philological Studies, about the workshop’s plans and international cooperation, as well as to Ani Kokobobo, Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas, who opened this year’s workshop with her report ‘Strange Bedfellows – Leo Tolstoy and Andrea Dworkin’.

Burrow's Delta helps determine the real author of And Quiet Flows the Don

The scientific landscape is changing before our eyes. Different sciences are becoming more and more intertwined with one another, and this sometimes creates quite unexpected combinations, such as the digital humanities. This field is developing rapidly, with conferences and summer schools now being held on the subject. In addition, HSE recently devoted an entire week to the Digital Humanities. But what is this field and why is it so important?

The website ‘web-corpora.net’, which hosts corpora, tools for text automatic processing and other linguistic resources created at HSE, has been redesigned and updated.

On September 15th, 2016, a presentation of the research web service ‘Textograph’ for the digital processing of texts was held in the House-Museum of Anton Chekhov. Boris Orekhov, Associate Professor at the School of Linguistics, is one of the system developers.

The first Moscow-Tartu School in Digital Humanities has taken place at the Leo Tolstoy House and Museum in Yasnaya Polyana. The school‘s aim is to create an interdisciplinary academic environment in which modern computer methods are applied to the study of texts. The school was organized by the HSE School of Linguistics, Leo Tolstoy House and Museum in Yasnaya Polyana, and the Department of Russian Literature at the University of Tartu.

On May 17 th, 2016, a presentation and discussion of the Russian translation of the book ‘Distant Reading’ by Franco Moretti was held at RANEPA media loft.

Anna Vechkaeva and Anna Novosyolova, 4^th-year students of the School of Linguisitcs, will take part in the international research conference ‘Approaches to the Editing of Slavonic Texts. Tradition and Innovation in Palaeoslavistic Ecdotics’ (ATTEST) that will be held at the University of Regensburg on December 11-12. The students will present the report ‘The Dictionary of the Russian Language of the 11th-17th cc. as a Database: Information Retrieval and Research Perspectives’. The report is co-authored by the School lecturers Marina Bobrik-Froemke, Roman Krivko and Boris Orekhov.

HSE’s School of Linguistics, along with Samsung and the Leo Tolstoy State Museum, has developed a mobile application called ‘Living Pages,’ which offers users a new way of reading Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. The programme’s launch coincides with the Russia’s Year of Literature.

On December 1-3, 2014 a workshop on lexical typology was held at the University of Helsinki. The event was organized by students and lecturers from HSE Faculty of Humanities specializing in fundamental and computer linguistics.