On October 19, the HSE School of Sociology hosted Dr. Kerstin Jacobsson, Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), for a seminar entitled ‘Emotions and Morality in a neo-Durkheimian Perspective on Social Movements’. Held as part of the International Sociology Seminar Series, Dr. Jacobsson’s talk was based on the book Animal Rights Activism: A Moral-Sociological Perspective on Social Movements (co-authored with Jonas Lindblom), which develops a novel theoretical perspective on social movements. Following her lecture, she spoke with the HSE News Service about some of the key findings in her research on social movements, including as they relate to the post-Soviet space.
Work by graduates of the HSE undergraduate programme in sociology took first place at the Russian national undergraduate and graduate student academic research competition in the social sciences category. In addition, research by a graduate of the HSE St. Petersburg won an audience’s choice award.
The World Association for Public Opinion Research’s (WAPOR) annual regional conference ‘Survey Research and the Study of Social and Cultural Change’ kicks off at HSE on September 15, 2016.
In July, an international conference ‘Active Communities, Social-Economy Challenges and Local Knowledge’ and a summer school on ‘Sustaining Mutuality in Times of Crisis: Building Knowledge Alliances in Communities’ were held on Paros, Greece. Graduates of the master’s programme ‘Sociology of Public Sphere and Social Communications’ led by Nikita Pokrovsky, Professor at the School of Sociology, took part in these events.
Parents of school students in Moscow tend to believe that test assignments in two major final exams—the Basic State Exam (BSE) and the Unified State Exam (USE)—are too complex and teachers fail to properly prepare students for the finals; this negative attitude, which appears to be a widely-held stereotype not necessarily supported by evidence, is formed long before the exams come round. However, according to a study by Alina Pishnyak and Natalia Khalina, once the exams are over, families no longer consider them so hard to pass.
Christian Frohlich has been a Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and Non-Profit Sector since 2014. This year he is being fast tracked for tenure in the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences in the School of Sociology. Dr Frohlich has a DPhil in Sociology from Leipzig University, Germany. He spoke to HSE English News about his research into civic activism in Russia and about why he likes living and working in Moscow.
Karl Bruckmeier is an environmental sociologist and since 2011 he has been a professor at the Analysis of Social Institutions Department at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences. He talked to the HSE English News Service about the challenges of being an interdisciplinary academic and about the pace of change in Russia in attitudes towards the environment. Anna Chernyakhovskaya began the interview by asking Professor Bruckmeier about his life at HSE.
