About the Faculty

The Faculty of Humanities was established at the HSE - Nizhny Novgorod in 2012 and currently offers four bachelor's degree programmes and two master's degree programmes. In 2023, the Master’s Programme Modern Practices in Literary Studies: Poetics, Interpretations, Commentary will be launched.

The teaching staff of the Faculty is unique: 9 doctors of philology, doctors of political and philosophical sciences, holders of PhD degrees obtained at leading foreign universities, as well as young teachers who already have academic degrees. In addition, for many years, native German teachers have been working at the faculty.

Faculty members cooperate with the Faculty of Humanities of the HSE - Moscow and other Russian universities. The Faculty also has research links with the Universities of Oxford (University of Oxford), Sao Paulo (Universidade de Sao Paulo), Paris (Paris VIII), Vienna (Universität Wien), Linz (Johannes Kepler Universität Linz), the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany (Universität Duisburg-Essen), the University of Utah, USA (Utah Valley University) and other universities aimed at cooperation in the field of humanities.

The faculty brings together degree programmes in applied linguistics and applied sociology with further engagement in philology, applied political science, and applied psychology. Furthermore, the Faculty of Humanities aims to connect the humanities with mathematical, socio-economic and language training in Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes offered by all faculties at HSE Nizhny Novgorod.

The faculty’s major areas of study include issues regarding applied linguistics, intercultural communication theory, linguistic political science, comparative linguistics, and literature. Moreover, its special research interests include a new area of humanities - comparative conceptology. In this respect, HSE lecturers and students, in cooperation with academics from Austria and Germany, are implementing the ‘Linguocultural Concept Sphere of Austria: Constants and Concepts’ project, which is based on the unique collections of the ‘Austrian Library’ at the HSE Nizhny Novgorod.

Furthermore, the faculty’s modern instruction in humanities combines fundamental and applied approaches, which form a necessary basis for a successful career in any area. This training is already offered at leading European and American universities within the framework of applied humanities. And now, the applied aspects of the humanities are available for learners at HSE Nizhny Novgorod.

Faculty of Humanities – Main Principles

• We focus on the applied aspects of the humanities, which, until now, have been ignored in traditional models of humanitarian teaching in regards to fundamental nature.
• Our courses are interdisciplinary: the humanities are taught in parallel with other reference fields.
• Furthermore, we support a systematic approach as to how the humanities are taught.
• We focus on foreign languages. For instance, students can learn a second foreign language from their first year and even choose a third foreign language (Eastern or Slavic), starting from their third year. In addition, at the end of the second year, students take the IELTS exam.