A new year – new tricks!

Rustamjon has started his two-year Marie Curie Fellowship in the Aleksanteri Institute, in the University of Helsinki, but keeps commuting back and forth between Helsinki and Lund, where he has ongoing projects as well. One of them includes a survey on legal culture in Uzbekistan, which he is conducting with colleagues from Sweden.

Meanwhile we are all busy taking part in the development of the new International Russian Studies Master´s Program in the University of Helsinki.  Take a look at the home page here:https://www.helsinki.fi/en/programmes/master/russian-studies

The program offers English language teaching to students wishing to acquire in-depth knowledge of Russia through a global perspective. This implies that we do not merely study Russia as such, but use Russia as a prism through which we can understand globally important challenges, such as climate change, inequality, technological change, etc.

Our team members design and teach several courses in 2018-2019. These include ‘Global Processes and Flows in Russia’, coveríng global migration, technological and resource flows in Russia, which we will teach together with post-doctoral researcher Saara Ratilainen and associate professor Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen from the Aleksanteri Institute.   We are also involved in the design and teaching of the course on ‘Global Indicators of Governance and Law in Russia’, with associate professor Marianna Muravyeva and post-doctoral researcher Freek van der Vet.  Finally, we have designed a course on ‘Globalized Frameworks in Russian Policy-making’ with post-doctoral researchers Meri Kulmala, Anna Lowry and Marina Khmelnitskaya from the Aleksanteri Institute.

The new MA Program will mark a shift in the life our team members, as we assume more teaching responsibilities. It gives us an unique opportunity to design new courses in line with the goals of the MA program. It is a priviledge to have such an avenue for the dissemination our research and knowledge to new generations of students. It is going to be a mutual learning experience!

In addition, all of us have been preparing for this new chapter in our lives by taking several pedagogical classes both in the Lund University and in the University of Helsinki. ‘Constructive alignment’ has become a new motto in our understanding of learning, course design and assessment practices. The fall semester of 2018 will tell how our new ideas  work in reality.