Regional Seminar “Life satisfaction in urban space: historical and sociological aspects”

On May 22-23 on the basis of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University Research Institute of Urban History conducted regional seminar “Life satisfaction in urban space: historical and sociological aspects”. “Region” here refers to Central and Eastern Europe and Asian post-Soviet countries. The seminar is a part of an international project HESP Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching “Wealth, Poverty and Life Satisfaction in Transition Societies” (http://reset2011.wix.com/wealth_poverty_lsits#!) which is implemented by the Open Society Institute and Central European University (Budapest). Project director: Sergey Yakubovskiy. Project period: June 2011 - May 2014. Host institution: Odessa National University named after I.I. Mechnikov.
Researchers from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Germany, Great Britain and Hungary are participants of the project. Victoria Konstantinova and Igor Lyman involved in the project from Berdyansk State Pedagogical University.

The seminar “Life satisfaction in urban space: historical and sociological aspects” has been attended, in addition to the project participants, by teachers and students of BSPU, members of Research Institute of Urban History and staff of Berdyansk schools.

Video-report of associate professor of Higher School of Economics (Moscow) Lilia Rodionova “Using of statistical methods in oral historical studies of life satisfaction in urban space” became interesting from the viewpoint of interdisciplinary of urban studies.

A sociologist of Ivanovo State University Inna Kodina not only delivered a lecture “Viewpoints of research of urban environment: image, memory, space or lifestyle?”, but also for two days had close contacts with students and postgraduates of BSPU. By the way, Inna Kodina had an opportunity to get acquainted in absentia with Berdyansk students-historians a year ago, being a coordinator of an international research “Happiness, wealth, poverty and life satisfaction in the material and spiritual dimensions: a view of students of “post-Soviet” space (based on students’ essays)”, which was also a part of the project HESP ReSET “Wealth, Poverty and Life Satisfaction in Transition Societies”..

The research became possible through the efforts of a dozen researchers and their 275 students from Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Ukraine. The goal of the research – to investigate the notion of the student community from post-Soviet countries about happiness, life satisfaction, wealth and poverty. Students of different courses, specialties and forms of education had the opportunity to express their thoughts in 4 blocks of topics that concern the explanatory and descriptive aspects. As a result of processing of the essays researchers got invaluable opportunity not only to substantiate the method of the essays as a scientific method of gathering of qualitative information, to identify its strengths and weaknesses, but also to reveal the deeper context of the studied subject. The research was implemented in the “urban space” of Bishkek, Ivanovo, Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Berdyansk. From Berdyansk Victoria Konstantinova, Igor Lyman and students of the social-humanitarian faculty of BSPU involved in the research.

Interestingly, that the Ivanovo sociologist is the author of a number of materials on the website of Research Institute of Urban History, including materials of “Gallery” about cities of Ukraine, Russia and Germany. Besides, last year she published a large article “Small towns of a large country: contradictions and determinants of development” in a historical-culturological anthology “Frontiers of city” (editor – a member of Research Institute of Urban History Vladislav Gribovskiy, members of the editorial board – Victoria Konstantinova and Igor Lyman).
In addition to the regional seminar, on May 22-23 where were a presentation of the project “Wealth, Poverty and Life Satisfaction in Transition Societies”; presentation of books published by Research Institute of Urban History in the context of this international project; workshop “Using of sociological methods in oral historical studies of life satisfaction in urban space”; survey of evaluation of students’ feedbacks (on what ReSET gave them, how their teachers, who were the participants of ReSET, changed, how new methodologies and approaches were effective), a number of other events.