Seminars 2011
May,17. SESL researchers presented the results of the largest survey on migrant children in recent years
The director of the Sociology of Education and Science Laboratory Daniel Alexandrov, senior researchers Valeria Ivanuishina and Vlada Baranova have reported about the largest and most detailed study of migrant children in Saint-Petersburg in recent years. They told how many migrant children study in St. Petersburg at the time, about their adaptation, academic achievements and friends. Scholars also focused on measures for successful integration and importance of these studies.
The public seminar was held with a great success. About 50 people from different NRU-HSE units (CYS, LCSS, etc.), Center for Independent Social Research, European University, Saint-Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts, journalists of 7 newspapers attended it.
May,13. International Round-Table on Environmental History
On May, 13th the National Research University-Higher School of Economics at St. Petersburg hosted the international round table on environmental history, organized by SESL and the Department of Humanities.
The round table brought together interesting and very diverse audience: teachers, researchers and students of different departments: historians, historical geographers, archaeologists, historians of science, environmentalists. There were people working in museums and foreign graduates.
Daniel Alexandrov outlined those scientific fields where environmental historians may interact to develop their region. He also highlighted the need for international cooperation, joint European programs on environmental history. He also raised a question of the necessity of teaching technological history to Russian students –engineers.
April,18. The Second Seminar on PowerPoint
On April, 18 Daniel Alexandrov held the second seminar on PowerPoint at the Laboratory. The main point was to explain which is the wrong way in presentation-making for academic purposes. After technical details that we have studied during the first class, we focused on laconism and easyness for comprehension. Daniel Alexandrov showed some examples of presentations suitable for marketing only, not for academic purposes. The lesson also included a master-class during which the participants were asked to find mistakes in presentations. Scholars also practiced more effective visualisation of their data and on simplification of the slides.
Moreover, the participants started to preparе a common folder of high quality pictures and diagrams to facilitate preparation of all the future presentations of the participants of SESL collective projects.
April,14. Individual Consultations on Network Analysis from Groningen Scholars
Intensive seminars on social network analysis (SNA) held by specialists from University of Groningen, Netherlands, took place at the Sociology of Education and Science Laboratory (SESL) in the middle of April. A part of the lessons was devoted to the presentations made by the seminar’s participants. They demonstrated their projects where SNA is used.
The dean of the department of Sociology Olesya Koltsova cosulted with Groningen colleagues, as well as Inessa Tarusina, Vera Titkova, Alexander Pronin, Svetlana Savelieva and Daria Khodorenko. Irina Khvan, Alexey Gorgadze and Egine Sukiasian have presented the first results of the research on ethnic groups in “Vkontakte” social network.
April,11-13. Network Analysis Seminar by scholars from Groningen
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On April 11-13 intensive seminars on network analysis were held in the Laboratory. They were delivered by invited specialists in this field from the University of Groningen, Netherlands. Christian Steglich and Marijtje van Duijn are among the most prominent scholars in network analysis and the University they work for is a world-known center in these studies. Cristian and Marijtje have been working in this field for 15 years now and have unique experience in exploring various types of networks.
The fist day was given to lectures. Marijtje and Christian told about the basics of network analysis, its history and applications. Later on they explained how to use R sofware for analysing and visualising networks.
The second day was also busy, not only with lectures but with consultations. Laboratory scholars got a unique chance to discuss the cases they use network analysis for with specialists who are fairly experienced in this field.
April,8. A.Semenov held a master-class on network analysis
On April, 8,2011 a public seminar on network analysis was held in the Laboratory. It was delivered by Alexander Semenov, Ph.D. student at HSE in Moscow. The seminar was organized to study the basics of ERGM (p*) – Exponential Random Graph Models. These models are one of various methods of analyzing social networks.
Practical implication of ERGM was demonstrated on the research of Alexander Semenov, who studies networks in livejournal.com community. He took 4 types of networks and analyzed the effects in and between them by ERGM.
April, 4. SESL master-class. Multimedia presentations in MS Office PowerPoint
On Monday, April 4, the staff of the Laboratory repeated some well-known options and learned new things about multimedia presentations in MS Office PowerPoint. This seminar was the first one out of two planned for this semester. The idea is to cover the basic rules and options of the multimedia presentations for scholarly purposes and for visualization of sociological data.
March, 25 and 31. The Third and the Fourth Seminars in Network Analysis
On March 25 and 31 the seminars on network analysis were held in the Laboratory by Valeria Ivanushina. The participants learned more about centrality, betweennness , closeness and others. The scholars practiced in drawing networks where nods show centrality values.
Some new terms were introduced such as connectivity, triads, cliques and their types. Scholars learned how to use such software as KliqueFinder and studied Marc Newman algorythm for community detection.
During the practical part of the seminar the participants managed to draw networks of migration flows, of Soviet sociologists and of ethnic communities in "Vkontakte". They also worked on effective visualisation of the data.
March, 23. Seminar on “TopPlan”
Seminar on “TopPlan” software was held in SESL on March, 23, 2011. “TopPlan” enables to edit maps and objects on it. During the seminar all the basic functions of this program such as editing, adding and deleting objects, creating address lists were represented.
This program is important for certain projects of the Laboratory as it facilitates distribution of schools on the map for analysis and presentation. Another research project of SESL deals with analysis of social networks and requires creating detailed maps.
Vera Titkova delivered the seminar and explained how to download a map, delete needless elements with the help of “Layers” function and how to visualize necessary objects to make it more convenient to work with this map.
March, 18. The Second Seminar of Crash-Course on Network Analysis.
The second seminar on network analysis was held at the Laboratory on March, 18, 2011. The methods of data mining for network analysis, single-mode and bipartite networks, the ways of representation of these networks in a table were taught during this class. Also some other concepts were explained. Degree centrality and ego-network were among them.
The participants started to explore “Pajek” that is one of the most popular programs on network analysis and application to it “Excel-to-Pajek”. This program is often used to visualize large volumes of data. During the second class the participants managed to create a network based on the data collected for one of the projects of SESL.
That first network built by those who attended the seminar represented ties of ethnic groups in a popular Russian social network “Vkontakte”. New participants are always welcomed! There are 15 of us already!
March,11. Crash-course on network analysis. Introductory class.
On March, 11, 2011 the first seminar on network analysis in SESL was held. During that introductory class the audience got acquainted with the basic terms and approaches of this research field. The first seminar was about the basic categories of the method such as network, actors and their attributes, vertices, ties, edges, arches, dyads and methods of dyad analysis.
The terms were represented both in English and in Russian as the expected course on network analysis by the Dutch colleagues will be held in English. Moreover, the basic ways of visual representation of network data were shown. These are adjacency matrices that are used for small networks, node lists that are convenient for representing binary networks, and edge lists that are the easiest for data visualization.
Everybody can join the crash-course on network analysis in SESL!
March,1. SESL master-class. Graphic Editors Basic User Options.
On the 1st of March 2011 a new series of seminars on computer proficiency was launched in the Laboratory. The first seminar in the series was on graphic editors.
All the graphic programs can be divided into 3 categories: browsers, organization and storage programs and editors.
During the first master-class the most popular graphic editors were demonstrated, these were a system of graphic editors Adobe Photoshop and vector editors of CorelDraw system.
Some editors were shown that are simpler in use, such as ACDSee and XnView. The first of them is shareware, the second is distributed for free. The both programs are designed for image browsing and storing and support dozens of file formats. They also have basic edit features.
February,18. The fourth seminar on social stratification
On November,12 2010 SESL launched a series of seminars in order to study contemporary theories of social stratification in more details. The participants read certain articles and prepare reports by their own.
The aim of these seminars is to focus on practical implementation of these theories for the projects of SESL and empirical data that we collect during the surveys. After the report the participants are asked to imply this or that theory to the work they do at the moment. This approach helps to refine theoretical background of the scholars and to read classical works on social stratification more precisely.
On February, 4 the third seminar was dedicated to Goldthorpe's theory. The participants analysed the texts and critical articles. On February, 18 the fourth seminar was held. During the seminar the scholars worked on practical implication of Goldthorpe's theory. The researchers focused on his definition of classes and its comparability with contemporary situation in Russia.
February,2. Regular seminar on collective student project "Ethnic communities in social networks"
In the laboratory a unique research project of ethnic groups in social networks has been started several months ago. This project is of special interest as the research group consists of initiative students from the department of sociology. Moreover, these students are experts in ethnic issues to some extent as they belong to ethnic groups.
The majority
of these researchers are first-year bachelor students, and this is the first
time when they participate in a research project. The members of these group are Alexey Gorgadze,
Egine Sukiasyan, Mary Margaryan, Marina Ostapenko, Veronika Kostenko, Kirill
Suharev and Denis Shusharin. The manager of the project is Irina Khvan.
The research group holds seminars in the Lab weekly to discuss the progress
with the academic advisor of the project, professor Daniel Alexandrov.
