Research & Expertise news at HSE University

What causes variation between languages, and what do they have in common? How is language embedded in our general cognitive system? These are some of the questions that Eric Reuland, Faculty Professor of Language and Cognition at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics (OTS) (Utrecht University), will address in a lecture course entitled ‘Syntactic approaches to anaphora’ that will be held at HSE Moscow from September 12 till 22, 2016. Professor Reuland recently spoke with the HSE news service about his research interests, his upcoming visit to Moscow, and some books he recommends for those interested in gaining exposure to the field of linguistics.

Children tend to perform better at schools with a positive psychological climate, where they feel safe and comfortable, according to Tatiana Chirkina and Tatiana Khavenson's study 'Correlation between School Climate and Student Academic Achievement.' According to social scientist Renato Tagiuri, the school climate is understood as comprising several dimensions, such as student-teacher communication, student attitudes towards school, and teacher work satisfaction and expectations in terms of student academic achievement.

At the beginning of September, the American Political Science Associate (APSA) awards ceremony took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the ceremony, two awards were given to the work Misperceiving Inequality* by Vladimir Gimpelson and Daniel Treisman for the best research project presented at the 2015 APSA congress. The comparative public policy section gave one award, while the comparative political research section gave out the other.

Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Leipzig in Germany, began her involvement with HSE when she started working with two young scholars – Christian Fröhlich, an Assistant Professor at HSE and a former PhD student of hers, and Rafael Mrowczynski, who has served as a DAAD-lecturer at HSE. Ahead of her upcoming visit to Moscow, where she will present her work on ‘Multiple Secularities’ and give a seminar on Qualitative Methods, Professor Wohlrab-Sahr spoke with the HSE news service about her work, her academic interests, and her views on the key attributes researchers need today.

EU MPs are increasingly negative on Russia, and their positions are largely defined by their national interests – rather than by their ideological affiliation to any particular political grouping in the European parliament. The researchers believe that this indicates that national interests trump ideological stance for EU MPs. Their research was presented in the article: National or European Politicians? Gauging MEPs Polarity when Russia is Concerned.

Normally, parents help shape their children's attitudes towards money. In their study "Adults' Perceptions of Pocket Money and Cash Rewards as Tools of Children's Economic Socialization," Alina Pishnyak and Natalia Khalina compare parental attitudes towards pocket money in the U.K., Germany, and Moscow, Russia. Their findings concerning Moscow are based on data from the Moscow and Muscovitessurvey of 3,109 adult respondents, of whom 75% were parents, conducted by the Institute of Humanitarian Megacity Development in 2014. According to the study's authors, most parents begin educating their children about money at the age of six.

How can cooperation among BRICS countries be built in the modern era? What can contribute to the economic growth of China and Russia? These are the key issues of the Summer School on ‘Economics and Business in BRICS: Perspectives for Russia and China’ that took place in Saint Petersburg in August 2016.

Many Russians practice user innovation by developing their own inventions for use in everyday life, recreation, sports, etc. According to a study by Konstantin Fursov and Thomas Turner conducted as part of the HSE ISSEK Monitoring Survey of Innovative Behaviour of the Population, the estimated share of user-innovators in Russia may be as much as 10%, which is substantially higher than in many other countries.