'Night' Talk about Science
HSE University hosted its long-awaited student festival ‘Night’ at its building on 11 Pokrovsky Boulevard Thursday. Featuring 12 hours of lectures, games, master classes, music, and conversation. It was a night no students, lecturers or guests had any time for sleep. Ekaterina Streltsova, Senior Research Fellow at HSE ISSEK, participated in the Research Fail Night session, where she talked about how she was nearly kicked out of the supermarket during a social experiment, and then held a series of individual consultations in the format of Science Dating.
About ten years have passed since the first ‘Night’ was held at the Cultural Centre - an entertainment festival where HSE community members gathered annually until 2014. After a short break, the festival returned in an updated format: since 2016, the participants not only sing songs with their guitars, but also talk about science, modern art, technology and social issues.
The organizers - Ingroup STS, the Centre for Student Academic Development, and the Office for Alumni Relations and Career Development - decided to celebrate the university’s return to Pokrovsky Boulevard by organizing six large interactive zones for HSE guest on five floors of the building. Scroll through the photos below for a look at the best moments from each of the six zones during HSE Night.
Research
Science ambassadors took over the library that night. To tell the truth, no one was eager to leave the zone.There were stories about research failures that sounded like detective novels (for example, the way Adrian Vlahov, Senior Lecturer at the School of Linguistics, was mistaken for an American spy because of the stripes on his jacket, and Ekaterina Streltsova, Senior Research Fellow at HSE ISSEK, almost kicked out of the supermarket during the social experiment), lessons in the history of Academic Tinder, which gives you a chance to receive a “like” on your term paper topic from Professor Vitaly Kurennoy ; and discussions on important issues in Science Dating with those who already know thatscience is not boring.
Games
Games are a universal way to learn and relax at the same time. Walking around the HSE building at Pokrovsky Boulevard, it was hard to miss the numerous board games, ‘Mafia’ participants and enthusiastic Dendy and Nintendo players. Meanwhile, Elizaveta Oginskaya, Analytics Team Leader at Changellenge, and Arthur Gobeev, Managing Partner at Center-Game, told the guests how gamification helps companies find employees and develop their skills.
Media
When you see the film 'The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station’ (1895) by the Lumière brothers next to the strangest videos from the Chinese social network TikTok on one screen, you begin to realize how media has changed over the past hundred years and how it affects our lives. Guests of HSE “Night” had the opportunity to dive into the history of media, try their hand at being news editors and learn about YouTube journalism in the HSE Central atrium and building F.
Literature
Why is modern Russian fiction unpopular abroad, while non-fiction, on the contrary, is in demand? How does the monopolization of the book market affect the emergence of new names in literature? These issues were discussed at the lecture by Galina Yuzefovich, literary critic and visiting lecturer for the HSE-NES joint degree programme. Festival guests also drew their own comics and took part in a literary quiz.
Movies and TV
Many people dream of getting clos to the magic of the cinema. Festival guests learned about the latest industry trends from Dmitry Kotov, producer and Academic Supervisor of the programme ‘Multi-platform Film Production’, watched and discussed cultural codes in sitcoms and tried to recreate the sounds of a fight, which, fortunately, only caused damage to a cabbage.
Performance
Contemporary art is not always provocative, and activism is not always a performance. This year, festival guests at the HSE Cultural Centre tried to understand the intricacies of contemporary art and how to add it to their life. Theatre lovers were especially lucky: they could compare the classic plot of ‘The Gabrieliad’ performed by HSE Theatre with an experimental fairytale thriller from the Alejandro Valencio Theatre troupe. DIY fans, meanwhile, tried their hand at sculpture, drawing and art photography.In the end, the seventh ‘Night’ festival offered guests a wonderful chance to enjoy a variety of intellectual entertainment amidst a cozy and friendly atmosphere.
