In March 2018, a team of researchers at the IOE Laboratory for University Development traveled to Augsburg, Germany to present at this year’s conference, Higher Education in Modern Ecosystems: Efficiency, Society and Policies.

This January, Spain’s Seville, which is the capital of Andalusia and one of the country’s most picturesque localities, welcomed an expert workshop as part of the large-scale SELFIE school digital self-evaluation project. Irina Dvoretskaya, a researcher at the IOE Center for Educational Leadership, attended the event to discuss the results of SELFIE’s pilot stage in Russia and outline key areas for further developing and refining this new school assessment framework.

IOE doctoral student Irina Shcheglova has recently completed her internship with the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California Berkeley (the USA). Immediately after she returned to Moscow, Irina was thrilled to finally share with IOE fellows about the academic experiences she has gained and her overall impressions of this trip.

Education researchers Alexei Obukhov of IOE and Elena and Luiza Adamyan of Moscow Teacher Training University have recently traveled to Iran as part of an academic program aimed at tracking cross-country best practices in education development. During their visit, which was organized by the leadership of Iran’s two top private school networks, Mofid School and Salam School, the scholars presented about what is being done in the Russian Federation to advance secondary education, and learned from their cross-border peers about how the objectives of modernizing school environments are addressed in Iran.

On October 6–8, 2017, the town of Kratovo, Macedonia welcomed the 5^th International Festival of Ethnographic Films. This Fest is a vibrant forum for students, filmmakers, anthropologists and multidisciplinary scholars to discuss visual methods in ethnographic research, the most pressing cultural and socioeconomic issues confronting indigenous communities across the globe, and the implications of evidence drawn from visual anthropology for broader social studies, including education. Upon a special invitation from the Fest’s organizing committee, IOE expert Alexei Obukhov traveled to Kratovo this fall to take part in the event.

Leading expert at the Center for Cultural Sociology and Anthropology of Education participated in the annual conference of the Society for Longitudinal and Life-Course Studies. Her report on the Institute of Education researchers’ expertise was welcomed with interest by the international community of scientists.

Member of the Research of Modern Childhood group, Anastasia Nisskaya, Ph.D., took part in the meeting of OECD Early Childhood Education and Care Network at the beginning of June. She later shared her impressions and thoughts on what is common for Russian and European preschool education.

Major scientist in the field of Education Law and Policy, Professor Jan De Groof was on a work visit at the HSE Institute of Education to discuss perspectives of creation of the International Center for Education Law and Policy at the Institute.