A new facade for the mansion of A.G.Kushelev-Bezborodko by architect E.Schmidt (1859). Credit: European University at St Petersburg. Free Art License. Last Friday, Russia’s state education watchdog Rosobrnadzor suspended all education activities at the European University at St Petersburg. The university’s educational license has been suspended, meaning that some 200 of its MA and doctoral students might be left in limbo, with two equally unattractive options available to them: a transfer to a different school — or giving up on their theses altogether.
A private school, the European University (EUSP) is possibly Russia’s best postgraduate school in social sciences and the humanities. Involved in a dense network of international research projects, the university’s staff and students contribute regularly to leading academic journals; their names are well-known to Palgrave, Sage and Cambridge University Press editors; their conferences are attended by scholars and practitioners of the highest rank.
Indeed, back in the early 2000s, I was a sociology postgrad at the rival Saint Petersburg State University, and I managed to apply for and win my first research grant solely by spending hours at the EUSP’s library, teaching myself the basics of academic writing. Unlike the musty shelves of my own alma mater, which, alas, contained little more than rancid Soviet textbooks, the EUSP had the American Journal of Sociology stacked in neat piles, publications in gender studies and a range of Judith Butler’s works. These treasures were particularly precious because almost all of them were contributed to the library by the university staff personally.
