Professor Martin Gilman: Moscow – an Unlikely but Advantageous place to work

Martin Gilman, the Director of Centre for Advanced Studies of the HSE has been the Head of CAS in Moscow since 2006. Today we asked Dr. Gilman about the current situation in the international recruitment of academic staff. 

— Dr. Gilman, can you, please, provide an update on what’s new in the international recruitment in the HSE?

— The new wave of international recruitment of academic staff is a key component of the drive toward the internationalization of HSE.  The tenure-track recruitment system we have in place for a number of our faculties is a major stepping stone in moving towards the realization of HSE ambitions to become a major international research university within the next few years.

I’d like to focus on our relatively recent approach to post-doctoral fellowships. The HSE is now advertising post-doctoral research positions for 1 year fellowships in 21 of HSE's research laboratories and centers. Formally we established a postdoctoral fellowship program last year which was a kind of an experiment. Thus we came into the academic year 2012 -2013 with one post-doc in history and three in sociology.

— What’s the role of post-doctoral fellowships in the research life of university?

— Post- doctoral fellowships play an important role in the life of an international research university. These programs are aimed at people who have PhD from good international research university and are looking for an opportunity to spend a year and concentrate on writing articles for international peer-review journals without heavy teaching obligations. It’s kind of a spin off after the PhD.  It’s clear that anyone who wants to have a successful academic career will face the necessity of publishing in the top international peer-reviewed journals. For a newly minted PhD that’s a daunting prospect. HSE is the right place for that.

— What’s HSE offering for the academic year 2013-2014?

— We offer to these newly minted PhDs an opportunity to spend a year here in Moscow, working in one of HSE research centers or laboratories with other scholars in areas very similar to their own interests. Although we encourage teaching, there are no teaching obligations.  HSE offers a great variety of research opportunities and we hope that fresh PhDs will find a lab or a project that correspond to their own research interests. I am convinced that they could have enormous synergy by spending a year here in an environment which will encourage them to produce and to publish in international recognized peer-review journals. All details are at the https://iri.hse.ru/post_docs 

— How would you formulate the advantages of working in HSE in Moscow?

— Moscow may be seen as a very exotic place in terms of the international academic job market in most disciplines. Some people may also have concerns of moving family or how would they deal with life in Moscow even if they find the university environment very tempting. The post-doctoral fellowship program permits what you may call a “trial period”. This is a ten month period in which you come to Moscow and find out firsthand what it’s like to live here, what it’s like to work here in a lab, in a faculty, how are the students, etc. One can then make a more informed choice. At the end of those 10 months they might decide to go elsewhere to pursue their research agenda and, in that case, hopefully spread the good word about the increasingly serious research efforts of HSE.  Or they might be tempted to apply themselves for a tenure-year track position having been reassured while they were in their post-doctoral year. In fact this year with one of our postdocs in sociology we have had an applicant who made a decision to apply for a permanent position.

— Can you describe the international team of the HSE today?

— There are 34 people on international tenure-track contracts from all over the world who represent 14 different nationalities, as well as 4 post-doc fellows, and almost 60 other academic staff (Russian and foreigners) with PhDs from international research universities. HSE is a great place for professional growth and Moscow is one of the world’s great metropolises as a place to live. I’ve been here for more than a decade with my family and keep enjoying it.