Стажировка в Школе лингвистики

In the spring of 2015 I spent a few months at HSE doing an internship at the School of Linguistics, as part of my master's programme in comparative linguistics at my home-university in Ghent (Belgium). The reason for coming to HSE was that I wanted to work with Caucasian languages, with which I long since had a fascination, and a lot of the expertise in that field is concentrated in Moscow. To be honest I didn't really know what I was getting myself into exactly, as my exchange was not part of a specific programme, I was merely referred to professor Daniel of HSE by one of my Belgian professors. My request to come to Moscow for an internship regarding Caucasian languages came a bit out of the blue, and my objectives at that point were fairly vague, which is why I was surprised by how ready people at HSE were to receive and accomodate me. During my stay I contributed to an ongoing project in which grammatical features of Daghestanian languages are linked to a map of the area and worked on my thesis which is also related to these languages. It proved a big advantage to work on my thesis here, since I was able to access material that is unavailable or very hard to obtain in Belgium and also my supervisor brought me into contact with a researcher who has a lot of experience working on this specific theme.

 

Within my master's programme I was also expected to attend a number of lectures and conferences on subjects within my field of study, which is not a very hard demand to meet in Moscow. Amongst others I attended guest lectures by Asifa Majid at HSE and seminars where researchers talked about their work at other universities and institutes. It was a good experience getting a taste of the academic world outside of my own area and in general everybody working and studying at the School of Linguistics that I've met has been very welcoming and helpful.