Alexander B. Kamenskii

His colleagues extend their congratulations and birthday wishes

This year, HSE University has entered four additional QS World University Rankings by Subject, thereby bringing its grand total of represented broad and specific subject areas to 23. HSE ranks in 19 of the 38 subject rankings that include Russian universities, as well as in four of the ranking’s five broad subject areas. HSE is among the world’s top 100 universities in five subjects, including History and Social Policy & Administration, where it has entered the rankings for the first time.

On the 6th of September Alexander Kamensky gave a lecture on the XVIII century, the central topic of which was the social history and self-identification of people of that time. The lecturer provided historiographical background, as well as general historical context, starting from the creation of the society of Anton Glen up to the Soviet historiography.

On June 22, several HSE lecturers and staff members were awarded the status of Tenured Professor at a meeting of HSE Academic Council. Sixteen HSE staff members became Distinguished Professors at the Higher School of Economics for the first time.

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'.

This April, Microhistory Days took place at HSE. The event coincided with the visit to the School of History of Prof. Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (Reykjavík Academy in Iceland) and Dr. István Szijártó (Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest), renowned experts in microhistory, founders of the Microhistory Network, and authors of What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice, a comprehensive analytical monograph.

An international school of young historians, ‘Russian – Polish Entangled History: Scientific Reconstruction and Reflection in the Collective Memory’, took place in April at the School of History (HSE Moscow). Undergraduate and master’s students from HSE and the University of Warsaw took place in the event. Alexander Kamensky, Andrey Iserov, Dariusz Klechowski, Director of the Polish Cultural Centre in Moscow, and Leonid Gorizontov, who lead the organization of the Russian-Polish meeting.

Alexander Kamenskii, Head of the School of History took part in the conference ‘KOLL-MANIA. Celebrating the scholarship of Nancy Shields Kollmann’ that was held on October 8-10 in Stanford.  Alexander Kamenskii presented the report ‘A Story of Criminal Love in the 18th Century’ – a case study based on a lawsuit found in the archive of Moscow office on zemstvo affairs.

Academic Studies Press issued the ‘Word and Image in Russian History: Essays in Honor of Gary Marker’. The articles ‘Businesswomen in Eighteenth-Century Russian Provinicial Towns’ by Alexander Kamenskii and ‘Catherine’s Liberation of the Greeks: High-Minded Discourse and Everyday Realities’ by Elena Smilyanskayawere also included in the collection.

Academic Studies Press issued the ‘Word and Image in Russian History: Essays in Honor of Gary Marker’. The articles ‘Businesswomen in Eighteenth-Century Russian Provinicial Towns’ by Alexander Kamenskii and ‘Catherine’s Liberation of the Greeks: High-Minded Discourse and Everyday Realities’ by Elena Smilyanskaya were also included in the collection.

Every era builds its own version of the Middle Ages, and the modern age is no exception. Oleg Voskoboynikov, the youngest full professor at the Higher School of Economics, talks about the reason for the popularity of metaphors that refer to that era, why the ‘Suffering Middle Ages’ group on VKontakte [Russia’s largest social media site — Ed.] is not the same thing as medieval studies and how the desire to be different from everyone else can lead a student to study the Middle Ages.

Today, HSE Academic Supervisor Evgeny Yasin celebrates his 80th birthday. The HSE News Service congratulates him, and in honour of the celebration, is publishing an extract from Andrey Kolesnikov’s book ‘Dialogues with Evgeny Yasin’.

December 5-6, 2013 HSE held an international conference “Diderot, Encyclopaedia, Enlightenment”, which was organised jointly by the Philosophy, History and Philology faculties. Russian academics and French researchers from the universities of Caen, Reims, Paris Ouest and Paris Sorbonne all took part in the forum.

On March 13th, as part of the visit of a delegation from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (France) (Ecole des autes études en sciences sociales, EHESS) to the HSE, a cooperation agreement was signed between the two universities.