We continue the conversation about fornication in Russia in the 18th century with historians Amiran Urushadze and Pavel Romanov in the podcast "History is just beginning".

The European University launches a popular science series, "History is just beginning", where we talk to scholars who are discovering the past by studying what is left of it. The focus of the first episode is Christian marital morality, church interrogation methods and punishment for extramarital sex in pre-Petrine Russia. Investigations into fornication cases in Russia in the 18th century are discussed by Associate Professor of the Faculty of History Amiran Urushadze and a graduate student of the same faculty, Pavel Romanov.

In 2022, the History Department of the European University at Saint Petersburg will call the 16th Annual Conference “Constructing the ‘Soviet’?” for young scholars. This year our point of departure will be a category of the “global socialist ecumene”, which we apply to the Soviet and other socialist projects history.

Researchers from the European University at St. Petersburg and the Medical Institute named after Berezin Sergey (MIBS) calculated the effectiveness of Russian vaccines against symptomatic coronavirus infection during an outbreak caused by the delta variant. "Sputnik V" protects against the delta variant. Тhe effectiveness of the vaccine was 58%. In reality, the efficacy is even higher, since this calculated figure is influenced by the number of people who recovered but were not included in the data.

On the 30th and 31st of March 2022, the international conference ''Esotericism and Russian literature'' will take place. It will explore a complex variety of relations between Russian literature and esotericism.

The Institute for the Rule of Law (IRL) at the European University at St. Petersburg, based on data from more than 550,000 scheduled and unscheduled inspections, identified and assessed the main trends  in the activities of regulatory authorities this year.

The book Reindeer herders’ thinking: A comparative research of relations between economy, cognition and way of life (Verlag Der Kulturstiftung Sibirien, 2021) is a result of more than 10 years of fieldwork in the tundras of Komi Republic and Nenets Okrug.

On December 15, QS Quacquarelli Symonds published an annual regional ranking of 450 universities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. EUSP was listed in this rating for the first time, taking 117th place in the overall ranking and 25th among Russian universities.

ACRA and the European University at St. Petersburg have entered into a strategic partnership agreement to develop the green and responsible finance market, as well as corporate sustainability practices. The memorandum on cooperation was signed by Managing Director of ACRA Alexey Mukhin and Rector of the European University Vadim Volkov.

MAST is a platform that connects researchers in the social sciences and humanities with technical specialists to work on joint projects. Historians, art historians, anthropologists and other academics who have not previously worked with big data will be able to pose new research questions and answer them with the help of technicians who operate data analysis tools.

According to the results of the new stage of a serological survey, more than 80% of adults in St. Petersburg have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. Repeat infections (confirmed by PCR tests) are relatively rare events-under 3%. In order for the active phase of the epidemic to end, as many citizens as possible must have immune protection.

The European University at St. Petersburg, together with the State Hermitage Museum, the Genotek Medical Genetic Center and the Grotex (Solopharm) company, are creating the Paleogenomics Laboratory. It will be part of the new International School of Arts and Cultural Heritage.

The European University at St. Petersburg together with the State Hermitage, Yandex and BrainGarden are creating the Laboratory for Art and Artificial Intelligence (Laboratory I3). Laboratory I3 will be part of the new International School of Arts and Cultural Heritage.

The European University at St. Petersburg and the State Hermitage Museum create the International School of Arts and Cultural Heritage. The project will bring together a world-class museum, an advanced center of scholarship and education, and an innovative industry.

What could a coal phase-out in Russia look like? This event will discuss the Russian coal sector and prospective elements of a coal phase-out in the country. Building on findings from the project ‘The Russian Coal Sector: Challenges and Transition Opportunities’ convened by Climate Strategies, we will be debating Russia’s climate policies, including the coal sector and energy transitions.

Researchers from Skoltech, the European University at St. Petersburg, and Lomonosov Moscow State University have developed an algorithm that detects the ultimate controlling owners of companies.

In the eighteenth century, Russia emerged as a truly European power. Yet despite the presence of Russians in Europe and Europeans in Russia, the vast Russian Empire continued to be perceived as a quasi-oriental land. As a result, those artists and works of art that moved from West to East were – and sometimes still are — all too often seen as vanishing into a distant realm. This panel will highlight current research on the Russian art world and its engagement with Western Europe in the eighteenth century. Short presentations will examine the importance of the French tradition to St. Petersburg’s Imperial Academy of Arts, Russian artists’ travel to the Netherlands and Paris, Russian patronage of Venetian art, connections between Russian and British art as reflected in portraits by Rokotov and Gainsborough, and Russian collecting of classical antiquities.

The journal Science of the American Association for the Advancement of Science published an article about an independent study of the effectiveness of vaccination, which was conducted by scientists from the European University, the Medical Institute named after Sergey Berezin, the First honey in St. Petersburg and the Tarus Hospital.

Vaccinated residents of St. Petersburg with symptomatic COVID-19 are almost 5 times less likely to have severe disease. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization was 81% for fully vaccinated individuals.

BOUNDARIES OF THE POLITICAL IN RUSSIA, THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIX — FIRST QUARTER OF THE XX CENTURIES