Higher School of Economics St. Petersburg

Faculty of History

(established in 2012 )

Bachelor of Arts in History degree program Ph. D. Center for Historical Research (research division of the Faculty of History)

Faculty of History Higher School of Economics – St.

Petersburg

59 first- and second-year students coming from 40 regions of Russia (including the Southern and Ural Federal Districts) Admission requirements: Russian Unified State Exam with a total score of at least 304 (a total of four subjects)

Our BA in History program today:

Courses offered by exceptionally qualified faculty members, some of whom are recruited on the international market Student research supervised by established scholars who teach at the facultyArcheological, museum, and archival internships Annual international summer/winter schools in EnglishStudent exchange with HSE – MoscowVibrant student life

BA in History today:

Our Faculty MembersEvgeny Anisimov, Dr.Sc. in History, tenured professor, academic advisor of the Faculty of History;•Winner of the Alexander Nevsky Prize in History and Literature;•Winner of the Antsiferov Prize for a Contribution to Contemporary Research on St. Petersburg

Alexandra Bekasova, Cand.Sc. in History, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History, Senior Research Fellow of the Center for Historical Research •Member of ESEH, SHOT and T2M •Research Interests: history of mobility and transportation, environmental history, history of technology, history of science and education in the 18th – 19th centuries.

Tatiana Borisova, Cand.Sc. in history, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History, Doctoral Student at the Faculty of Law, Leiden University, NL, Senior Research Fellow of the Center for Historical Research •Research Interests: history of political thought and law.

Our faculty members•Victor Kaplun, Cand.Sc. in Philosophy, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Sociology•Research Interests: modern social and political theory, historical sociology, history of Russian and European Enlightenment.

•Yulia Lajus, Cand.Sc. in History, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History, Vice-President of the European Society of Environmental History, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Historical Research

•Marina Loskutova, Ph. D in History, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History, Research Fellow of the Center for Historical Research•Research Interests: history of science, history of education, environmental history, oral history.

Our faculty membersDmitry Panchenko, Cand.Sc. in History, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History, Research Internship at Harvard University, fellowship at the Center of Hellenic Studies (Washington DC, USA), Alexander von Humboldt research fellowship at the University of Konstanz (Germany), research fellowship at the Collegium of Fundamental Research, the University of Helsinki.Co-editor of Hyperboreus: Studia Classica, Research Interests: Ancient history.

Ivan Sablin, PhD Candidate at Heidelberg University (Germany), Senior Lecturer, editor of the portal Net.abimperio.net: the Network of Empire and Nationalism StudiesResearch Interests: historical Geography and History of Siberia and Asia.

Adrian Selin, Dr. Sc. in History, Professor, Director of the Center for Historical Research, co-supervisor of the “Swedish Novgorod” project. Research Interests: Historical Prosopography, Early Modern History of Central and North-Eastern Europe.

Our faculty members

•Alexander Semyonov, Ph. D, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of History, member of the Editorial Board of international scholarly journal «Ab Imperio. Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space», Visiting Professor of University of Chicago and University of Michigan (USA)•Research Interests: intellectual history, history of the Russian Empire in the 19th-20th centuries, comparative history of empires, colonialism and nationalism.

•Vladimir Uspensky, Senior Lecturer, Vice Dean for Education, Junior Research Fellow of the Center for Historical Research •Research Interests: social history of the Middle Ages, quantitative analysis in historical research.

•Julia Lajus. Introduction to Environmental History•Marina Loskutova. Introduction to History of Science•Ivan Sablin. Russia in Eurasian and World Politics•Vladimir Uspenskiy. Russian Political Institutions in Historical Perspective

http://spb.hse.ru/en/history/courses_en

Courses taught in English

Getting practical experience: Student InternshipsArcheological Fieldwork Opportunities

Our undergraduate students enjoy a wide range of opportunities to have some practical experience in archeology, archival research and museology by working on respective internship programs. Our archeological internships take place in Staraya Ladoga and at the Left Bank archeological excavation project supervised by the Institute of Archaeology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences led by UNAS corresponding member Aleksandr Motsi .

Archeological excavations in Staraya Ladoga are carried out on the grounds of the Staraya Ladoga Historical and Architectural Museum. The excavations are supervised by the Institute for the History of Material Culture, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and take place from mid-June to mid-August. Each year the project attracts students from St. Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, as well as experienced researchers from Russia and Scandinavian countries. The head of Staraya Ladoga Archeological Internship Program at our faculty is Professor Adrian Selin.

Archeological Internship 2013in Staraya Ladoga Participants speak:

“The Group from our Faculty had an excellent opportunity to take part in the research that explored objects of daily life of local inhabitants; we learned new archeological skills”

If you’d like to summarize the discoveries made by our team, we’ve found about 10 pendants, pieces of jewelry and clothes that belonged to ancient Slavs, many bones and pieces of ceramics, we even found a part of an iron tool of the Bronze Age. Presumably, it was used for polishing.  

“Saint Petersburg – the Capital of the Russian Empire” in cooperation with University of Basel, June 3-11, 2012

III Annual Summer School of the European Society of Environmental History “History of Change and Natural Resource Management: Society, Nature, Technologies and State” August 28-31, 2012

“Russia between Past and Present: Russian Politics, History and Culture in Comparative Perspective”, in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh, July 2-11, 2013

International Summer Schools

Summer School Participants speak: “I think today it is important for young Americans to know Russian history”; “Within just a few days spent at the summer school we got plenty of different impressions that concern the ways the Americans perceive the Russians, the American culture, the interest that the Americans express towards our country” «Summer School has become an

excellent experience of cooperation between Russian and US students in the research sphere. It was interesting to discuss with young Americans the ways in which older generations in both countries perceive each other, their understanding of world politics and their actions towards each other. All of us, we hope that it is not our last meeting.

International Summer School “Russia between Past and Present: Russian Politics, History and Culture in Comparative Perspective”, in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh, July 2-11, 2013

Director of the Center Professor Adrian Selin

Research Scope:

•Modern history; •Nationalism and empires in comparative perspective; •Boarders, contact zones and mobility

The center hosts international academic conferences, accepts foreign students as interns and scholar in the positions of affiliated research fellows, and offers many opportunities for those students who study at the History Department to get engaged in its research projects as research assistants.

Center for Historical Research

The focus of the seminar:

- The writing of history in historical perspective, the functions of historical narratives in contemporary society, the role of historian as a public intellectual. - Cross-disciplinary dialogue in humanities and social sciences, the current state of inter-disciplinary research (environmental history, empire, nationalism and colonialism studies, historical anthropology, historical sociology, intellectual history and social theory)-The current state of history as a profession in Russia, problems and perspectives of its international cooperation

Interns of the Center for Historical Research participate in the workshop

“Borders of History” Research Seminar

(Scientific Advisor Professor Alexander Semyonov)

“Borders of History” Research Seminar

Evgeny Anisimov Human feelings in the 1812 War ; Stephen How Aftershocks of Empire:

Recent Debates on Decolonization in the UK

Roundtable with Irina Prokhorova For Public and Professional Use: humanities and history in contemporary Russia

Ronald Suny “Legacies of Empire in Russian History”

Andrew Zorin  Is it possible to reconstruct individual emotions and sensibilities of the past? A contribution to the study of Russian nobility and its culture in the 18th – 19th centuries

Benjamin Natans “Amnesty International and the Dissident Movement in the Soviet Union”  

International Research InternsAndrei Cusco,  Al. I . Cuza University of Iasi, Research FellowResearch project: "Visions and Perceptions of Romania in the Russian Imperial Discourse and Public Sphere in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century”

Kimberly Powers, a postgraduate student from the University of Michigan Research project: "Mullahs by Appointment, Legitimate Marriages, and Birth Record Books in the Russian Empire«

Brandon Schechter, University of California, Berkeley, Graduate Student Research project: “The People’s Instructions”: Indigenizing the Great Patriotic War Among “Non-Russians”

Our faculty is actively engaged in international research International Research Seminar “Historical Biography in the Context of Regional and Imperial Borders of Northern Europe,” October, 24-26, 2013 г.

International Seminar “The Dialogue between Post-Imperial and Postcolonial Studies: sovereignty, the politics of diversity and composite societies in comparative perspective,” May 27-28, 2013

International Workshop “Borders, transnational communication and mobility in the Baltic region of Europe. Past and Present,” November, 21-22 2012

International Workshop “Circulation of Knowledge in the Divided World: Attraction, Confrontation, Cooperation of Expert Communities in the Cold War,” September, 5, 2012.

International Workshop “History of Exploration and Management of Natural Resources: Society, Nature, Technology and State”, August 30-31 2012 г.

Supported by the Leverhulme Trust (UK). The project unites scholars from 6 universities in the UK, the US and Russia. Conferences and retreats:

2013 – Solovetsky Islands2014 – Chernobyl2015 –Lake Baikal

International Project on “Russian Environmental History”

Student Life

Student trip to Novgorod Velikii

On this trip, students had an excellent opportunity to learn alternative narratives of Russian history. They explored medieval material and written culture, art and architecture. They studied cross-cultural transfers and exchanges in the Baltic region.Our professors offered master-classes in reading medieval architectural monuments through the prism of sacral texts of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Participants: Professor Anisimov, Professor Semyonov, Associate Professor Tatiana Borisova, Professor Troianovskii (the head of the Novgorod Archaeological Expedition).

The visit was organized by the students of the Faculty of History.

Student Life

HSE Championship in Intellectual Games and Open Championship of Russian Universities  

KVN – “Club of the Funny and Inventive”, humor show and competition

Film Club

Welcome to the Faculty of History HSE – St. Petersburg!

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