Alessandro Locatelli, from Florence, Italy, is a third-year student of the Bachelor's in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication at the HSE School of Foreign Languages. In his interview with the HSE News Service, he reflects on why it’s important to integrate a cultural dimension into language learning, what makes HSE lecturers special, and how curiosity motivated his decision to study in Russia.

Around one-third of Russians (31.3%) rarely eat out or buy ready-made meals. The core group of active consumers—those who eat out or purchase prepared food almost every day or several times a week—accounts for only about 9% of the population. These are the findings of a study conducted by the HSE Institute for Social Policy. According to the researchers eating out is no longer a marker of high social status in Russia.

HSE University and the Russia Renewable Energy Development Association (RREDA) have signed a partnership and information cooperation agreement to support Renewable Energy of the Planet—2026, a national competition with international participation for students and early-career researchers. Applications are open on the competition's website until September 20, 2026.

Elizaveta Fomina, second-year student of the Bachelor's programme 'Political Science and World Politics,' spent the autumn semester at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. Read on to find out why you should choose a mobility programme in Asia and how studying abroad helps to develop independence and build global plans.

Scientists from HSE University, MSU, and Tallinn University of Technology have studied a fossil species of ancient brachiopods that lived in a warm sea in what is now northern Estonia more than 445 million years ago. These ancient brachiopods developed a cup-shaped shell with a protective 'cap' that shielded them from overgrowth by other marine organisms. The study has been published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

Felicia Akpelike, from Ghana, is a first-year student of the Master's in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication at the HSE School of Foreign Languages. In her interview with the HSE News Service, she talks about why she enjoys Russian language and culture, the benefits of studying in an international environment, and the importance of stepping outside your comfort zone.

Every year, the master's programmes at the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (HSE MIEM) attract a large number of students from Africa and the Middle East. Each of them follows a unique path towards becoming an engineering professional. Ahead of receiving their degrees, several graduates shared their personal stories about how they chose their profession and what they learned during their time at HSE.

An international team of researchers, including scientists from HSE University–St Petersburg, has developed microlasers that emit deep-ultraviolet light at a wavelength of 255 nanometres. The devices operate at room temperature, and the smallest of them measures just two micrometres in diameter—roughly the size of a bacterium. These microlasers could be used in sensors, spectroscopic systems, photonic chips, and communication devices. The paper has been published in Optics & Laser Technology.

Psycholinguists from the Centre for Language and Brain at HSE University–St Petersburg have shown that words that are frequently misspelled are processed more slowly by readers, even when presented with the correct spelling. The researchers confirmed this effect for the first time using Russian-language materials and found that response speed is most strongly linked to how confidently individuals can distinguish the correct spelling of a word from an incorrect one. The study has been published in The Mental Lexicon.