Community news at HSE University

HSE Alumni Awards ceremony was held online this year. In 2020, 104 alumni were nominated for the award and 12 000 people submitted their votes.

HSE researchers Irina Arzhantseva and Heinrich Haerke from the Centre of Classical and Oriental Archaeology (Faculty of Humanities) have been involved in the discovery of the earliest domestic cat yet found in northern Eurasia. The presence of Dzhanik (as the archaeologists have begun to call the tomcat) implies that there was a reasonably large settlement with a sedentary population even 200 years before it was surrounded by big walls and was called a town.

This year, Russia’s largest science and technology festival, Geek Picnic, was held online for the first time. Despite the new format, the festival programme included all of the event’s usual key features: expert lectures, workshops, competitions, and opportunities to socialize and network with fellow tech and science enthusiasts. HSE University once again served as the festival’s content partner.

How can you meet new people beyond your university and your immediate professional circle? Is it possible to make new friends during the pandemic when we are all self-isolating? Renata Sabirova, a fourth-year student of the HSE Faculty of Law and co-founder of the online chat service, Neplokho Poboltali (‘We’ve Had a Nice Chat’), helps answer these questions. She spoke with the HSE News Service about online lounges that are open to the country and the whole world.

This year, the HSE Publishing House celebrates two anniversaries: 20 years since its foundation, and 10 years since the launch of multiple monograph series in the social sciences, economics, and humanities. The publishing house celebrated both dates by participating in the Red Square Book Festival.

In VirusHack, a hackathon organized by Rostelecom, a team of students from the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM HSE) finished among the competition’s winning teams. More than 1,000 competitors from different regions of Russia presented 240 projects before the jury of the hackathon, which was held remotely.

Experts, participants and moderators gathered to share their predictions about the future of the humanity after the pandemic. What paradigm will replace anthropocentrism? What will happen to globalization, consumer civilization, and megalopolises? How will the virus impact policy and democracy and what will post-COVID ethics and anthropology look like?

What does the post-COVID future have in store for museums, universities, and the media? Does big data protect us or pose a threat? What are the prospects for fashion shows, cinema, and theaters? How are different generations experiencing the pandemic? These and other issues were discussed at the annual festival of communications, design, and media.