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You cannot study spoken dialects from books. Instead, you need to go to a village, seek out its elders, and earn the trust of local residents before you can record hours of spontaneous stories. This is how Natalia Muravleva, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, conducts her research. Her internship in Serbia continued her long-standing study of dialects spoken by Macedonian settlers. In this interview, she discusses how diaspora cultural centres help researchers reach informants, why native speakers need to be interviewed only in their own language (otherwise, as she puts it, they may 'break'), and how a single field season helped her finalise her monograph. She also shares warm memories of autumn in Belgrade and of colleagues with whom grammar can be discussed in three languages at once.

In September 2026, HSE University–St Petersburg welcomed more than 2,500 first-year bachelor's and master's students. Deans and alumni welcomed the newcomers and shared their wishes and advice on how to make the best use of their university years.

How can tourism be developed in historic areas? How can the interests of residents, tourists, businesses, and local authorities be reconciled? And how can the specific context of a particular city be taken into account when developing project solutions? These were the questions explored at the Urbanist Summer School (USS), which brought together students from leading Russian universities for the fourth time.

The donation ceremony was attended by Kim Sun Min, Founder and Director of the Pushkin House Cultural and Educational Centre, and Park Jung Gon, Director of the Cultural Centre of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Russia. HSE University received two paintings by Son Jin Seok, a professor at Kyung Hee University. The paintings will now adorn the premises of HSE’s Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs.

Would you like to know whether a speaker’s trembling voice or an accidental gesture can give them away? At HSE University in Nizhny Novgorod, researchers are developing an algorithm that analyses speech, facial expressions, and gestures, and determines whether information is truthful with 92% accuracy. The project has applications ranging from forensic examination and bank recruitment to fundamental research. Anna Khomenko, head of the research group and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Language and Brain at the HSE Faculty of Humanities in Nizhny Novgorod, explains how students and researchers are working together to create a corpus of video recordings, train a classifier, and prepare to introduce computer vision technology.

Researchers at HSE University employed a new method to model hypoxia in placental cells during pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia and identified molecular markers of tissue hypoxia. Since hypoxia is one of the key mechanisms underlying preeclampsia, these findings are important for a more accurate and timely diagnosis of the disease and for the development of effective treatment methods. The paper has been published in Placenta.

HSE University and the Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature have agreed to cooperate. The relevant agreement was signed by HSE Senior Director Andrey Lavrov and General Director of the Library for Foreign Literature Marina Zakharenko. The agreement provides for joint educational, academic, and cultural projects.

Taking part in the Student Research Paper Competition (SRPC) gives you an opportunity to present your research to experts, receive an independent assessment, and determine the future direction of your work. The competition is open to students graduating in 2026 not only from HSE University but from universities in Russia and abroad. Papers may be submitted in Russian and English, and in some fields also in French, German, and Spanish.