European educational practices at Lobachevsky University

The key discussion topic at the recent teleconference between the staff members of the UNN Faculty of Social Sciences and representatives of the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences of the Braunschweig Technical University (Germany) was the development of a joint Master's programme in social psychophysiology. As a result of active cooperation between Associate Professor Valeria Demareva, Senior Researcher at the UNN Department of Psychophysiology, Professor Andreas Hettiger, Head of the Language Centre at the Braunschweig Technical University, Professor Martin Neef, Head of the Department of German Philology at the Braunschweig Technical University, and Yulia Yedeleva, Lecturer of the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences at the Braunschweig Technical University, arrangements were put in place to start a joint international research and educational project.

The programme being designed will be highly interdisciplinary and innovative in many ways. It will address various aspects of the impact of information on people and the ways to modify a person's state through the influence of information. At the same time, the programme will cover various aspects of cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics, programming and web design, working with Big Data, media content design technologies and many other issues.

Potential opportunities for future Master's students include:

•  joint work on training projects for students of the Lobachevsky University Faculty of Social Sciences and students of the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences at the Braunschweig Technical University in the COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) format,
•  obtaining two diplomas ("double degree"),
•  participation in mobility programmes.

As part of the teleconference, there was a discussion on the possibilities of applying for funding for joint initiatives under the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and Erasmus+ programmes. In general, there is a vast potential for cooperation between the two universities and both parties are very interested in joint educational and research projects.

The Braunschweig Technical University is the oldest technical university in Germany. It is included in the TOP 500 of the QS ranking, as well as in the list of the best universities in Germany in electrical engineering (9th place) and mechanical engineering (9th place). It is a member of the association of nine leading technical universities in Germany (TU 9). The UNN Faculty of Social Sciences has a rich history of cooperation with German universities on research and educational projects. In particular, joint research and student exchanges as well as the 'Volonteer Social Year' project have been carried out with the University of Duisburg-Essen for over 20 years.