Summer School of the International Scientific-Educational Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research

Olga Gryaznova, Ekaterina Lytkina and Natalia Soboleva told us about their participation in the Summer School organized by our HSE colleagues from the ILSCR

In June Natalia Soboleva and Ekaterina Lytkina, research assistants of our Laboratory, and Olga Gryaznova, associate researcher of the LCSR, took part in the Summer School organized in Moscow region by the International Scientific-Educational Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research (ILSCR). That school was devoted to the topic “Designing research and writing papers on culture and behavior”. They prepared a note about it for our website.

This year the Summer School of the ILSCR was named “Designing research and writing papers on culture and behavior: an intensive training seminar”. It took place in a Moscow suburb from June 15 to 20. The format of the School was the following. Each day began with a lecture followed by a master-classes and seminars. In the evenings the participants had an opportunity to be consulted by the lectures of the Summer School.

Some prominent professors delivered lectures during the Summer school. Professor of the University of Sussex Peter Smith gave a lecture and a workshop on cross-cultural management, and also a lecture on strategy of preparing and submitting articles to peer reviewed journals. Professor of the Utrecht University Hank Flap told about theory of and approaches to social capital measurement.

Seminars were held by leading scientists in sociocultural research: professor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem Shalom Schwartz, professor of the University of Giessen Peter Schmidt (who also was a lecturer at the Summer School of our Lab this year) and professor of the University of Tartu Anu Realo. The topics of the seminars were: "Formulating hypotheses", "Designing questionnaires” and "Writing and revising papers".

All participants were divided into three groups for the seminars – eight people in each one. Each professor held one seminar for each group. Members of the LCSR were in the same group, also with sociologists, managers and psychologists which enabled us to get various useful comments from colleagues from different areas of scientific research. The presented projects of the LCSR researchers roused much interest both from the participants and teachers, and the speakers received useful questions and comments on the further development of their works.

That Summer School was extremely interesting and the atmosphere was nice and friendly. We managed to get acquainted with many interesting people, to learn more about the specific features of the research projects conducted in the ILSCR (which are close in many ways to the topics of our Laboratory!) and finally to gain experience in preparation and publication of the scientific results which is a crucial skill for young scientists.

Olga Gryaznova, Ekaterina Lytkina, Natalia Soboleva