This week, the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities held its annual academic festival at the university campus located at 1 Akademika Pavlova Street. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., faculty members delivered 29 original lectures covering a broad spectrum of topics in philosophy, sociology, Russian and foreign literature, journalism, psychology, and history.
“Our goal is to communicate—through an accessible, popular-science format—to a wide audience what kind of research our faculty and departments are engaged in, and to address the questions students so frequently ask us,” said Natalia Samykina, Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and curator of the project. “Many people assume that being a humanities scholar is easy. We want to demonstrate that being a humanitarian is genuine science.”
The academic marathon opened with a lecture by Alexander Nesterov, Director of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities and Head of the Department of Philosophy, titled “Why I Am a Humanitarian?” The torch was continued by Svetlana Zorina, Associate Professor at the Department of Social Psychology, who spoke on “The Truth About Lies: Expose It If You Can.” Inna Shumkina, Associate Professor at the Department of Russian Language and Mass Communication, invited students to reflect on “What’s Hidden in Speech: The Phenomenon of Precedentness.” Meanwhile, Sergei Nikolaev, Assistant at the Department of Russian History, addressed the audience on “The Retro Filter: How Memory of the Late USSR Works.”
Students and staff had ample choice throughout the day, enthusiastically crafting their own personalized schedules and moving from one lecture hall to another. All sessions drew significant interest, with psychology lectures nearly filling every seat. Particularly engaging were the interactive formats and live workshops offered by the speakers. For instance, Svetlana Zorina invited attendees to analyze a short video clip and assess whether the protagonist was telling the truth or lying, then justify their conclusions based on the concepts discussed.
Many in the audience—especially psychology and sociology students—learned that expert services in deception detection are primarily sought in high-stakes contexts where being caught in a lie could result in severe personal consequences, such as loss of reputation or drastic life changes, for example, during criminal investigations. They also discovered that universal indicators of lying practically do not exist, partly because the human mind constructs its own models of reality, making it difficult—even impossible—to reliably distinguish fantasy from falsehood, especially when someone is deceiving themselves.
Another practical exercise during Zorina’s lecture involved analyzing the speech of Stirlitz—the iconic Soviet spy from the film series “Seventeen Moments of Spring”. Students eagerly examined Vyacheslav Tikhonov’s character’s dialogue and, applying the knowledge gained during the lecture, successfully identified moments of deception.
Alla Gudzovskaya, Associate Professor at the Department of Social Psychology, delivered a lecture titled “The Psychology of Happiness: A Cheat Code for a Happy Life,” using simple, relatable examples to explain that happiness is a skill—one that can be trained like a muscle. She outlined key sources of happiness, such as meaningful work and marital relationships, and provided the audience with a practical checklist of actions to enhance well-being and reduce anxiety.
Victoria Romashova, Assistant at the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature and Public Relations, presented a lecture on “Autofiction in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature: Genesis, Transformations, and Prospects.” Vyacheslav Shevchenko, Head of the Department of English Philology, spoke about the role of interpreters at the Nuremberg Trials.
Irina Kolyakova, Associate Professor at the Department of Theory and History of Journalism, explored the evolution of humor in her talk “‘It’s So Funny to Me’: From Lubok Irony to Meta-Irony of Memes.” Inna Shumkina revisited the theme of “What’s Hidden in Speech: The Phenomenon of Precedentness,” while Natalia Samykina dedicated her lecture to “All (the Un)Truths About Generational Theory.”
The festival concluded with a final block of four original lectures, including “How Alexander Blok and Marina Tsvetaeva Wrote Horror Stories: The Infernal in 20th-Century Poems” by Tatiana Solovyeva, Assistant at the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature and Public Relations.
