It's project time

In December, within the framework of the 'Project Seminar' discipline, first-year master's students began working on projects that are unique for our research field. 'Applied Linguistics and Text Analytics' program keeps adding to the number of its partners, giving master's students new opportunities to realize their intellectual potential.

A meeting with the representatives of Just AI – an international IT company – took place in November, and the idea of building chat assistants for HSE applicants and first-year students was born soon thereafter. The project participants are taking courses from Just AI and will present the fruits of their labor in the near future.

Last week, another group of our students held an online meeting with Mikhail Alexandrovich Chirikov, the head of the regional training center of PAO Rosbank. He is the founder of a museum dedicated to his great-grandfather Evgeny Nikolaevich Chirikov and the era in which the writer lived. Mikhail Alexandrovich spoke about the personality of the writer, his literary work, his connection with Nizhny Novgorod and the museum itself, which was opened in 2018 in collaboration with the HSE university. The works of Evgeny Nikolaevich Chirikov and his journalistic articles are excellent material for analysis. The attitude of once popular, but later undeservedly forgotten writer to such important events as the First World War and the Civil War will be revealed by a corpus-based study.

That same week other students met Olga Nikolaevna Lyapunova, the Head of the Department of Sciences and Education of the Shchelokovsky Khutor Architectural and Ethnographic Museum. They will focus on the 'Christian miracle' concept in the legends of the Diveevo nunnery and the image of 'evil spirits' in the bylichki (short magical stories told with an air of truth) of the Nizhny Novgorod region. As part of their project, the students will also conduct a comparative analysis of the legends about Nizhny Novgorod. To date, this material has not been subjected to any linguistic research, which makes it especially valuable.

Upon completion of all projects, a round table will take place. During the event, students will talk about the results of their research and share the experience gained from working with ethnographic material.