On December 2, the Russian Science Foundation published the results of the competition in the priority area "Conducting Fundamental Scientific Research and Exploratory Scientific Research by Small Individual Scientific Groups". 1206 projects received grant funding. The European University at St. Petersburg is represented by three winning projects:
- "Maps of Social Connections: Arctic Terrestrial Movements on Satellite Images and Their Cultural Meaning" by Valeria Vasilyeva (Center for Social Research of the North)
- "Ethnobotany of the Tambov Region from Historical Sources" by Valeria Kolosova (Applied Center for Machine Learning, Data Analysis and Statistics)
- "International Relations as a Factor in the Recognition of Scientific Results" by Ekaterina Dyachenko (Center for Institutional Analysis of Scholarship and Education)
What do the researchers themselves say about their projects?
Valeria Vasilyeva, senior researcher at the Center for Social Studies of the North:
On the maps of the Arctic zone of Russia, especially in the east, there are almost no all-season roads. Officially, the transport infrastructure of the Arctic is aviation and the the marine fleet. In fact, in the North, people very actively move over land, using high-clearance and off-road transport. Because the local population uses personal transport, the picture of the connectivity of settlements, which we see from the outside, is much different from the one that can be seen from the inside of the region.
Our project, which we are doing together with Alexander Borovlev, senior lecturer at the Department of Ecology and Geology of the Institute of Natural Sciences of Syktyvkar State University, proposes to fill this gap. It is at the intersection of historical anthropology and geoinformatics, and aims to explore the material traces of social ties and analyze the cultural practices behind them.
For Valeria Kolosova from the MAST Center, the project is not the first project dedicated to Russian phytonyms:
The PhytoLex database, where we will put the materials of the project "Ethnobotany of the Tambov Region from Historical Sources", was created at the Institute of Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research to study phytonyms of the XI-XVII centuries. Later, at the European University at St. Petersburg, it was expanded within the framework of the project "Plants and People in the Russian Empire of the XVIII Century: Estate Distribution of Knowledge and Practices". The RSF grant is the third stage of work on the database. I will be cooperating with young colleagues from Tambov.
We will study the traditional culture of the inhabitants of the Tambov region using the material of the lexical and semantic field "Plants". This region has rich ethnographic and linguistic material. However, the herbal knowledge of the local population has hardly been studied. And this cultural heritage is disappearing...
We will systematize the texts of videos, audio tracks, photographs, as well as study archival and published materials that have not previously been used by researchers. Such an integrated approach will make it possible to study and visualize in detail the ideas about plants based on the material of the Tambov dialects. Later, the project methods can be extended to other local traditions of the Tambov region.
Researcher Ekaterina Dyachenko describes her project as follows:
The recognition of research results by the scholarly community is an important part of the system of knowledge production. Such recognition, in addition to the content of the research results themselves, is influenced by various factors. Among them are scholars’ prejudices regarding certain groups of authors.
For the analysis, we selected arrays of scholarly publications by Russian authors in three fields: climate research, cardiology, and political science. We assume that the impact of relations between countries on the recognition of research results, if any, depends on the field in question. We are going to test the data using the working hypothesis that the factor of international relations has little effect on the recognition of research results in globalized fields of science.
And more! This year marks the end of the Northern Social Research Center's project ʺThe Land of the Braveʺ. Overcoming Uncertainty in Interaction with the Physical and Social Environment in the Russian Arctic". This project was also supported by the Russian Science Foundation.
Earlier, the Center for Institutional Analysis of Science and Education (CIANO) received a grant from the Potanin Foundation in the category "Institutional Experience" — more details.
Фото: freepik