Elena Racheva
Graduate of the Public History program, 2017
PhD Student, Oxford University
MSSES thesis: "We were trying to be heroes". Ego-narratives of GULAG employees 1940-1950: analysis attempt
Ph. D. Thesis: "War Without Peace. The Discourse of Violence in Recent Russian History"
"My MSSES thesis was devoted to a topic that I had been studying for many years before (the oral history of the GULAG). When I entered graduate school, I thought about continuing studying it, but I realized that I was emotionally tired and would like to switch to something new. In general, I was interested in the anthropology of violence and the legitimization of violence in society. I decided to move away from the topic of the GULAG and study the consequences of local wars. Just like in the master's program, I decided to base my research on oral history (I used to interview camp guards, now I interviewed veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya) and consider not history, but the impact of historical events on the present, using the methodology of social anthropology and sociology more than history. But in general, it seems to me that I am still dealing with the same topic about the nature of evil and its penetration into social structures, and much of what I read and researched while working on my master's degree is useful and necessary for me now. I am in the middle of preparing my dissertation and at a crossroads, not knowing whether I will continue my academic career or do something else."
Many MSSES graduates continue their academic careers. We have collected several stories of our graduates who receive a PhD degree in foreign universities after MSSES.
Alexander Shirokov
2018 graduate of the Fundamental Sociology Program
Ph. D student, Rutgers University
MSSES thesis: "Bruno Latour`s actor-network theory as a method of text production: between semiotics and ethnomethodology”
Ph. D Thesis: "Medical knowledge-in-interaction: how patients make medical judgments and how doctors react to them"
"I do not yet have a clear title of the thesis, an approximate one can be formulated as follows: “Medical knowledge-in-interaction: how patients make medical judgments and how doctors respond to them."
My research is a conversational analysis of the interaction between a doctor and a patient based on video recordings of medical consultations that I collected in a private clinic in Moscow. In particular, I investigate how patients make various medical judgments in conversation with doctors and how the latter react to this. Such medical judgments can be diagnostic hypotheses, treatment preferences, explanations of one's condition, etc. Such things are the territory of the doctor's expertise as a rule. Therefore, the statement of medical judgments by the patient may be heard by the doctor as a violation of his/her territory of expertise. However, patients do this regularly and use various methods or techniques to make a medical judgment and do it more "gently", minimizing the potential violation of the norm or the supposed limits of expertise of the interaction participants. It is these methods that are the subject of my research.
There is no direct connection between my master's thesis and my current PhD research. My master's degree was rooted in a field called science and technology studies, and was a theoretical study of the methodological features of the approach of the French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist Bruno Latour. The main goal was to highlight his "policy" of research. My PhD research is rooted in a field called language and social interaction in the United States, and it is an empirical study focused on working with video data.
However, there is an indirect connection between these theses. While writing my master's degree, I was (and still am) inspired by the research policy that Bruno Latour proposes, inspired by the very idea of how he proposes to do research. However, over time, I realized that for me, it does not offer enough resources to practically follow this idea, that is, to conduct empirical research within this policy.
Thanks to the course of Andrey Korbut at MSSES, I started to get acquainted with the approach called ethnomethodology and conversation analysis at the same time with this realization. I was surprised to find that this approach assumes similar principles to what was proposed by Bruno Latour, but it is primarily focused on empirical research and provides many practical resources for this. AtAndrey Korbut`s proposal, we quickly gathered a small group of MSSES students, in which we discussed texts about this approach and began working with the data. Then we had a few collective studies, for example, we analyzed conversations with a telephone robot and dealt with a number of other topics. This group still exists, and we meet 1-2 times a month to discuss video and audio data, now online, because many of the participants live in different geographical regions. Some members of this group are engaged in joint projects. For example, Julia Augustis, a classmate of mine while studying at MSSES and now a PhD student at the University of Oulu, and I are doing research on how patients use smartphones during medical consultations.
Thus, although there is no direct connection between my master's thesis and my current research, the time spent at MSSES, in particular, participation in the group on ethnomethodology and conversational analysis, has largely shaped me as a researcher and laid the foundation for what I`m doing now".
Julia Augustis
2017 graduate of the "Fundamental Sociology" program
Doctoral Researcher, University of Oulu (Finland)
MSSES thesis: "Problem of inter-peace in Alfred Schutz`s sociology"
Ph. D. Thesis: "Mobile device use by "digital natives": co-operative skills and practices in face-to-face encounters" (title may be changed later)
“The topics of the two theses are actually almost unrelated. At MSSES, I worked with Alfred Schutz's "phenomenological sociology", focusing on theory. Now I`m analyzing video data using ethnomethodology and conversational analysis for my thesis. Most of my colleagues have a degree in either linguistics or information technology, so they probably haven't even heard of Schutz.
Despite the fact that the topic of the project I am doing at the University of Oulu is very far from the topic of my master's thesis, it was during my studies at MSSES that I gained the skills that I now need for the work. These skills were formed mainly as a result of taking Andrey Korbut`s course "Ethnomethodology and conversational analysis" and in the process of participating in the work of the "EMCA_Ru"research group. This group still exists and is even expanding, but already outside the MSSES walls. We regularly hold online data sessions and work on common projects in different cities and countries."
Roman Matvienko
Graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences, 2018
Ph. D Student in the Department of Sociology of the Chinese University of Hong Kong
MSSES thesis: "Actor-network theory after a speculative turn: towards the possibility of a non-correlationist sociology"
"My MSSES thesis," Actor-network Theory after the Speculative Turn: towards the Possibility of a non-correlationist sociology", was devoted to the significance of contemporary philosophical debates within speculative realism for sociological theory.
At the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I will be doing research at the intersection of sports sociology and ethnomethodology/multimodal analysis-studying how athletes, coaches, and referees interact during training and competition. My supervisor Christian Greiffenhagen and I will formulate the exact topic during the first year of training. The topics of my essays on elective courses-ethnomethodology, everyday life sociology, actor-network theory, and action theories-are directly related to the research for the upcoming doctoral program. In them, I considered the problems of sports through the prism of modern sociological theories."
Varvara Kobyshcha
2011 graduate of the Faculty of Social Sciences
Ph. D student, Department of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki
MSSES thesis: "Painting without a frame: the problem of the boundaries of an aesthetic object"
Ph. D. Thesis: "Art and Craft for Refugees: Creating Cosmopolitan Culture in Finland and Germany"
“My individual research projects, starting with the bachelor's degree, are localized in the field of sociology of art and culture, but for the thesis I combine this direction with studies of migration and cosmopolitanism."
Anton Dinerstein
Graduate of the "Political Sociology and Political Studies"program, 2011
PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst
MSSES thesis: "Nation-building projects in Belarus and a look from the" West”
Ph.D Thesis: "The people who “burn”: “Communication,” unity, and change in Belarusian discourse on public creativity"
"I took my works from my master's thesis as the basis for one of the chapters of my thsis on cultural identity. Based on this chapter, a publication came out in the fall of 2019. If someone is interested in the topic of my research, my dissertation and other projects are available here.
I defended my thesis and received my PhD in May 2020. In October, I`m planning to continue my research and research activities in a two-year postdoc program at the University of Macau."
Egle Rindzevicute
Graduate of the Cultural Management program, Cultural Management, 2000
PhD, Linkoping University, Sweden
MSSES thesis: Identity and cultural policy in the European Union
Ph. D. Thesis: Soviet Cultural Policy and Cybernetics
"In my doctoral thesis, I continued working with my interest in the state cultural policy development in Eastern Europe. Initially, this interest was formed due to my research at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences, as well as my student research on the relationship between art and national identity in Lithuania, but I expanded this topic to include the history of science and technology. Thus, in my doctoral thesis, I explore the ways in which the new sciences of cybernetics and systems thinking influence cultural planning, as well as cultural theory in the Soviet context.
I am now an Associate Professor of Criminology and Sociology at Kingston University in London. I lead an international research network project that brings together leading experts in the field of cultural policy, heritage and the nuclear industry, as well as scientists to explore the idea of nuclear cultural heritage. My next book is devoted to the development of scientific forecasting in Russia, its working title is "The Will to predict: the organization of the future".
Alexandra Block
2015 graduate of the Public History program
PhD at Griffith University (Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia (Griffith University)
MSSES thesis: Jazz and its impact on social transformation in Russia, the USA and Australia (1920-1934)
Ph.D Thesis: The role of music in migrant resettlement and development in regional Queensland and New South Wales, Australia
"Work on jazz music and its impact on social change in America, the United States, and Australia has led to the conclusion that cultural and, at the same time, social change was carried out, including by migrant groups, usually culturally marginalized. At the same time, these changes were created by "regional" migrants who migrated to urbanized centers (to the United States, Russia). These observations led to the hypothesis that music 1) has a special status in various migrant cultures and 2) can influence communication strategies, the creation of social capital, job search, etc.; 3) at the same time, music as cultural capital is an underestimated advantage of migrants in Australia, which can also affect the development of territories, cultural and economic capital.
I am currently involved in the research and project team of the "Regional Music Researchers of Australia". I conduct field research and write articles based on the results of intermediate studies."
Varvara Sklez
Graduate of the Public History program
PhD University of Warwick
MSSES thesis: "Political concepts of "history", "memory" and "nation" in the modern discourse about the famine in the USSR in 1932-33 "
Ph. D. Thesis:" The Aesthetics of Effort: Performing Difficult Past in Contemporary Russian Theatre"
"At first glance, the connection between these two topics is formal (both are somehow dedicated to the reception of the past in the post-Soviet space). But in reality, this work (as well as my studies at MSSES in general) was an important stage for me to get acquainted with modern research and memory practices and expand my understanding of modern historiography. At the same time, the theater remained one of my research interests all this time. When my interest in the past in the Russian theater became particularly noticeable later, I already had the tools to explore it thanks to MSSES. My thesis at Warwick is based precisely on the intersection of these two fields - theater studies and memory studies."