HSE University Takes Grand Prix in 2019 Communication Laboratory Award

The 3^rd National Forum of Science Communicators came to a close in St. Petersburg with the traditional announcement of the Communication Laboratory Award winners. HSE University was awarded the Grand Prix for its high standards of communication in all fields.

The Communication Laboratory is Russia’s first award in science communication. This year, the forum was hosted by last year’s Grand Prix winner, ITMO University. Over 300 participants came to St. Petersburg, both from big universities and smaller research institutions. For the first time, the Forum included two special sessions in science journalism. The 13 forum sessions discussed how to talk about research, where research communication finishes and PR starts, how to promote Russian science in international media, whether universities need their own media, and how to work with young audiences.

‘The popularization of science and academic research is experiencing its next boom, but, in the context of breakthrough technology and the growing importance of internet and social media, it causes a lot of issues. And we can solve them only together by sharing our success stories and, most importantly, discussing what we have so far failed to achieve,’ said Vadim Vorobyev, Head of the Public Relations Unit at HSE University.

The forum traditionally concludes with the Communication Laboratory award ceremony.

The award is given in three nomination categories:

  Experiment: for best practices in offline communications

  Participation Effect: for best promotion of scholars in the media

  Superflow: for the best management of one’s own communication channels

The Small and Big Grand Prix are awarded based on a university’s total number of achievements in these categories.

‘The award was founded by the Association of Education and Science Communicators together with the Russian Venture Company, and it has existed for three years. Generally speaking, this is not a long time, but it’s not so short for our young professional community,’ said Alexandra Borisova, President of the Association. ‘And we can already say that it achieves its main function – to find the best practices and share information about them.’ Each year, dozens of organizations apply for the award, and after the results are announced, the participants are not so much interested in the names of the winners, but rather in their portfolios: what cases got high grades and whether others can take advantage of these methods.

We now have continuity: new winners thank the previous ones for their advice. This means that the association is doing what it was invented for – it promotes mutual growth of science communicators!

HSE University has already won prizes at the Communication Laboratory Award in the past. In 2018, it took second place in the Grand Prix nomination category, and two years ago, it took first place in the Experiment category for the best offline project, Open University. This year, HSE University was awarded the main prize, the Grand Prix, for its high standards of communications in all fields. This means that next year’s Fourth National Forum of Science Communicators will take place at HSE University.

Vadim Vorobyev

Head of the Public Relations Unit at HSE University

Being awarded the Grand Prix speaks volumes about the work of the entire HSE PR Office in terms of the popularization and promotion of science and academic scholarship. For the past two years, on the pages of our academic research online publication, IQ.hse.ru, we have been highlighting the wide-ranging research that is being conducted at the university. We have written about the achievements of HSE University scholars in physics, sociology, neurolinguistics, history, economics, and many other fields. Without these scholars, academic publicity would be impossible. Telling about and promoting scholarship is one of the most inspirational and thrilling jobs. And we get this inspiration from the researchers who are ready to speak about their work and explain complicated things in simple language.

Hosting the National Forum of Science Communicators at our university will be a great opportunity to let research journalists and PR staff of leading universities know about how HSE University implements science communications (internal and external), how it promotes the results of research and involves students and city residents in the world of research and education.

Public promotion of the social sciences, economics and humanities is a special issue, which is of particular importance for our university. In this field, you are not guaranteed to be trusted by the public. You have to win this trust without a collider or a giant telescope. That’s why universities need to share their experiences, to find out how such tasks are solved by other researchers, what tools and solutions are used. This will be important for HSE University’s new faculties in the natural sciences as well, since they will have to build their internal and external research communications from the ground up.

Andrey Kozhanov

Member of the Forum Programme Committee, Director of the Centre for Student Academic Development at HSE University

One of HSE University’s missions as part of the Russian Academic Excellence Project 5-100 is to popularize academic research and promote a positive image of scholars and experts. The Forum of Science Communicators helps transform inter-university competition in this sphere into cooperation and partnership, to implement models of wider public involvement in the academic environment around the university with the support of popular science journalism and national educational projects.

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