The Second Summer School of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research: the first results
The summer school of our Laboratory came to its end a few weeks ago. Now it is time to take some breath, interpret the results and think about the future plans!
The Second summer school of LCSR has finished. More than 30 young scholars from universities and research centers of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Switzerland, Israel and Germany were the school’s participants this year. Students note that there is some progress in comparison with last year in terms of both organization (many people especially liked the venue choice) and content. Positive references were given to the school by the scholars who taught there, although some constructive criticism was also provided (the interviews with our key lecturers Peter Schmidt and Eduard Ponarin are available on the HSE website).
The LCSR researchers and new participants worked hard at the school’s lessons and mastered promising and up-to-date statistical methods important for contemporary social research. The program of the school was not limited to the studies of baffling statistics. The regular report session of the LCSR international research network also took place as part of the school. The participants reported new results of their projects conducted under the auspices of the Laboratory.
Two types of reports deserve the most attention. The first type includes final reports by the LCSR researchers and associated researchers: Olga Gryaznova (HSE), Julia Zelikova (HSE in Saint-Petersburg), Maria Ravlik (HSE in Saint-Petersburg), Margarita Zavadskaya (European University in Saint-Petersburg and European University in Florence), Tatiana Karabchuk (HSE), Christopher Swader (he presented the joint project with Leonid Kosals; both researchers are professors at HSE) and Margarita Fabrykant (Belarusian State University). Those researchers presented almost ready papers which require last corrections before submission to international peer-reviewed journals. From the Laboratory’s experts’ point of view, all reporters demonstrated results of very high quality; all of them managed their work and all of them have good chances to publish their papers. You may become familiar with the annotations of these projects on the personal pages of our researchers on our website.
The second type of reports which should be emphasized includes lectures given to the school’s participants by invited social scientists. Hermann Duelmer and Peter Schmidt (who was also teaching statistics at the school) presented their own research projects. Zsofia Ignacz, the assistant of Professor Schmidt, and Igor Zadorin, the head of the “Eurasian Monitor” also gave lectures. We prepared short summaries of these lectures for the website (see the PDF file attached).
Surely, the days of the school were filled with informal communication along with the official part of the program. It is not very easy to write about these moments; it seems so that happy faces on the pictures will tell you much more about the emotions than any text. Therefore we uploaded a special photo report about the school (see below).
We are very thankful to all the participants and teachers of our school! We hope that they have the best impressions from the event and they will gladly take part in our next school which is planned for July 2013 and will be devoted to multilevel structural equation modeling. We are also inviting everyone who would like to develop their statistical skills and receive consultations from outstanding scholars for development of their own research projects to the LCSR Summer School in 2013.
With best wishes, the LCSR team!
LCSR Summer School - Guest Lectures
P. S. We would like to point out separately that several events will be carried out before the next summer school by the LCSR. They might be interesting for those who are engaged into social sciences. The 2nd International Annual Research Conference: “Social Change in Cross-National Perspective” will take place in November in Moscow (the application deadline for presenting a paper is August 20, 2012).
We are also informing young scholars who are interested in conducting their own research on our Laboratory’s topics that call for associate researchers is due till September 7, 2012.
We are looking forward to collaboration with everyone who wishes to! We hope to see new people at our future events!
P. P. S. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to coverage of the summer school and participated in preparation of materials about the school and its participants for our website. They are the LCSR research assistants and deserve to be named: Olga Basmanova, Anna Mironova, Marina Nikitina, Tamara Petrova, Natalia Soboleva, Alexandra Shishova.