Research & Expertise

A new issue of the Laboratorium journal (Russian review of social research) guest-edited by Natalia Samutina and Oksana Zaporozhets came out of print. This issue of Laboratorium features a special section dedicated to street art or, more broadly, to vernacular images in the contemporary urban environment. The article by Natalia Samutina and Oksana Zaporozhets “Berlin, the City of Saturated Walls” and reviews of the Center junior research fellows Alisa Maximova and Alexandra Kolesnik are published in this issue. Full issue is available online.

Natalia Samutina and Boris Stepanov participated in the international conference "Publishing differently. Small publishers, independent journalists and bloggers in Russia" at Paris-Sorbonne University (October 1–2, 2015). The purpose of the conference was to analyse these independent, critical channels of publication in present-day Russia. Who produces this different material? What civic and political alternatives do they represent? What conflicts and compromises exist between them and the dominant players? To answer these questions, presenters doscussed and analysed alternative publishing channels in Russia, in journalism, publishing or blogs. The aim was to analyse not only their break with the dominant patterns but also the compromises and hybrid situations that arise from their mutual relationship, as well as to examine the emergence of alternative publications since the final decades of the Soviet Union.

Alisa Maximova, research intern of the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, is visiting King’s College London as a part of her PhD programme at HSE. Her work in KCL is supervised by Dr. Dirk vom Lehn, coauthor of several papers on museum visitor interaction and participation, as well as author of the book “Harold Garfinkel: The Creation and Development of Ethnomethodology”. Alisa is a visiting PhD student in the Work, Interaction and Technology Research Centre in the Department of Management. Members of the Centre specialize in studying social interaction, role of technology and material objects in collaboration and conduct in offices, control centers, medical environment, museums.

Oksana Zaporozhets participated in the international conference "Media and the City. Urban Media Studies: Concerns, Intersections and Challenges” at University of Zagreb (24–25 September 2015). She presented a paper "Invading urban underground: the mediatization of metro".

We resumed a regular academic seminar of Research Centre for Contemporary Culture (IGITI HSE). On September 23, IGITI Research assistant Alexandra Kolesnik presented a paper “Representation of the imperial past in British popular music culture of the 1970: the case of punk rock band the Clash”.

The working paper ‘Images of the Past in British Popular Music of the 1960s: ‘Relevant History’ of the Kinks’ by Alexandra Kolesnik has been published. The author studies the historical imagery of British popular music in the1960s drawing on the example of the rock band ‘The Kinks’. Their interest in English folklore, musical and cultural traditions, widely known to the national audience, became an original reinterpretation of relevant events in England of the 1960s, and national history as a whole.

In September 2015, a new form of cooperation started between Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies and IGITI Research Center for Contemporary Culture. A newly established international, inter-disciplinary research group within the project “Participatory cultures: post-socialist new media practices” is coordinated by Dr. Sudha Rajagopalan (European Studies, University of Amsterdam) with the participation of Dr. Ellen Rutten (Professor of Slavonic Literatures & Cultures, University of Amsterdam). Russian members of the group are Natalia Samutina, Oksana Zaporozhets, Boris Stepanov, and Alexandra Kolesnik.

We will resume a regular academic seminar of Research Centre for Contemporary Culture (IGITI HSE) in September 2015. The main goal of this monthly seminar is presentation and discussion of current research projects of the Center fellows and its partners. The seminar is aimed primarily at university audience: researchers, master and post-graduate students, but it is open to the public. For admission to the seminar, please write to Alexandra Kolesnik: aleksa-kolesnik@yandex.ru. See the scheduele of the seminar.

Alexandra Kolesnik participated in the international interdisciplinary conference "Vth Meeting of Young Researchers in Modern and Contemporary History" (panel “The Past at the Crossroads. Experience, Critique and Historical Imagination”) at Autonomous University of Barcelona (July 15–17).

On June 11–12, Natalia Samutina and Boris Stepanov participated in the international conference “Past the “Post-”: Theorizing the Post-Post-Soviet via (New) Media and Popular Culture” organized by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). They gave presentations on various aspects of cultural communication in RuNet. See the conference program and abstracts.