News

On July 8, 2016, Irina Savelieva, director of IGITI, presented her paper "Still Alive? Sociological Classics in Contemporary Historical Research" at the conference "Monuments, Relics, and Revivals" at Warsaw University. The paper focuses on sociological classics in historical research of the last 50 years.

Michael Gordin, professor of Prinston University, has published a new review of the books Russkie Professora (Russian Professors) by Elena Vishlenkova, Rufia Galiullina, and Kira Ilyina, as well as Soslovie Russkih Professorov (The Community of Russian Professors) by Elena Vishkenkova and Irina Savelieva (eds.) in the scholarly journal Kritika: Exploration in Russian and Eurasian History. We are very grateful to professor Gordin for the detailed analysis of our work.

Alexander Dmitriev, leading research fellow of IGITI, reported on Transfers within and on the Borders of Late Imperial Russia: Veselovsky, Lappo-Danilevsky and Beyond in École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris at the conference 'The Intersections of Russian History.' 

On June 6, 2016, Andy Byford, senior lecturer of Durham University, reported on 'Children Study' as a Transnational Movement: Self-Representation of Russian and Soviet Pedology.

On June 3, 2016, Marina Mogilner, leading research fellow of IGITI, reported on The Purity of Race vs. Imperial Hybridness: Vladimir Jabotinsky against the Russian Empire.

Kirill Levinson, leading research fellow of IGITI, reported on Emotion Concepts and Conceptual History: Perspectives on the Challenges of Translation at the conference 'Concepts of Passions and Politics' organized in London by UCL European institute, UCL Center for Transnational History, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and Center for Contemporary anf Modern History of the University of Sheffield.

Gabriel Abend, professor at the University of New York, reported on The Ways of Love-Making at the seminar of the Center for the History of Ideas and Sociology of Knowledge of the IGITI.

On May 12-13, IGITI Research Centre for Contemporary Culture held an international conference "Challenges of Participatory Culture: Methodologies and Perspectives of Research". Social scientists and scholars from the US and Europe met at the Higher School of Economics and discussed theoretical issues and research methods of the phenomenon of 'participatory culture', as well as different aspects of contemporary culture – fanfiction, street art, musical fandoms, etc. Dr Mark Duffett (University of Chester, UK) wrote a post about the conference.

The paper introduces a metaphor 'digital porosity' aiming to grasp the nonuniformity, limitations and gaps of digital connectivity (technological, material, spatial, social, etc.) in urban spaces. Being used as a research guidance, the metaphor raises the questions what digital porosity is? how is it produced? how is it changing? Based on the research of internet connectedness and practices of Internet use in the subways of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the paper states that the extension of the Internet zone and the inclusion of new urban spaces do not automatically increase the connectivity of the city, since the latter depends not only on the availability or the quality of internet communication, but also on the intentions and skills of the internet users and their ideas about the comfort and the possibility of internet connection, the role of the subway ride in the broader planning horizons.

On April 15, 2016, Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson, professor at the University of Iceland, and István Szijártó, lecturer at the University of Budapest, reported on Microhistory: its Advantages and Limitations. The round table was organized by the IGITI and the Laboratory of Medieval Studies of the HSE School of History.