Research & Expertise

What do Maya ceramics and pictures on 18^th-century Russian stoves have to do with comics? What are the specific characteristics of Russian, Asian and American comics? How do comics reflect social issues? These and many other questions were discussed at the 7th Russian Comics Conference ‘The World of Comics’, which was held online in March by the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies.

On March 19-20, 2021, the 6th Annual Russian Comics Conference “The World of Comics” (Mir Komiksov) was held in online format, organized by the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies of the National Research University 'Higher School of Economics'.

24 March, Dr. JoAnn Scurlock (Elmhurst College, emerita) presented her lecture “Magic in Mesopotamia” at the seminar “Traditions of Magic in the Near East and Caucasus” (moderator: Alexey Lyavdansky, Senior Lecturer, IOCS HSE).

February 3, 2021, Chaya-Vered Dürrschnabel (Researcher, University of Bern) presented her paper “How aggressive is aggressive magic? Apotropaic aspects of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic curse bowl texts” at the seminar “Traditions of Magic in the Near East and Caucasus” (moderator: Alexey Lyavdansky, Senior Lecturer, IOCS HSE).

On the 5th of December 2020 took place the International online seminar “Bosporus and the Northern Colchis. Greek colonies in a non‑Greek surrounding: dynamics of interaction of differently organized societies”, which was attended by participants from Russia, Georgia and Romania. The project was carried out under the direction of A.I. Ivantchik with financial support from the Russian Science Foundation.

On the 23rd of October 2020, Valentina Mordvintseva and Jean‑Paul Demoule delivered lectures during the discussion «Les Migrations en discussion» («Migrations in a discussion») in the series of online‑seminars «Géographie historique et géoarchéologie» («Historical Geography and Geo‑archaeology») of the l’École normale supérieure, Paris organized by Prof. Anca Dan.

On October 2, 2020, Poletayev Readings 9¾ took place – annual conference of the Poletayev Institute for Humanitarian Historical and Theoretical Studies. We present a report by Elizaveta Lysenko, Alexander Mikhailovsky, and Ksenia Belik, and video recordings of the round table discussions.

Dr. Valentina Mordvintseva gave a lecture ‘The Sarmatian Archaeological Culture: The Network Model vs. Speculative’ in a series of on‑line lectures of the Eurasian Department of German Archaeological Institute.