The chosen format involves holding the conference over the course of two months, with the papers posted on the conference website and discussions conducted entirely remotely.

The April Conference is Russia’s biggest international academic forum in economics and the social sciences, where leading Russian and international experts present their research, and entrepreneurs and public officials participate in discussions.

Today, in the face of an unfavourable situation caused by the global spread of COVID-19, many conferences in Russia and around the world are either being cancelled or postponed. Following a proposal by the rector, the HSE Academic Council has decided not to cancel the conference. Cancellation would be unfair to the hundreds of talented researchers who have chosen this particular venue to present their latest research to colleagues. A rigorous and impartial selection process led to approximately 800 participants receiving invitations to join the conference programme. Each of them put a lot of work into their papers. And each of those papers deserves to be presented to the academic community.

However, it is now impossible to hold the conference in its traditional form. ‘First, many international participants may not be able to attend, and they make up a significant part of the programme,’ – says Lev Yacobson, Deputy Chair of the Conference Programme Committee. ‘Second, there is no certainty that participants from Russian regions will be able to arrive either. We do not want the conference to be a purely Moscow-centred event—we have even allocated funds to support the arrival of young researchers from the regions who are planning to present the most interesting papers.’

Given the danger of hundreds of people gathering on the same site at the same time, the organisers have decided that rather than cancelling the conference, they would hold it in a distributed format. The chosen format involves holding the conference over the course of two months, April and May, as opposed to one week in April. What does this mean? Separate sections of the conference, as a rule, do not have a large number of participants. The problem arises when dozens of such meetings are held at the same time in adjacent rooms of the same building. If the sessions are distributed over time, the problem largely disappears. 

But what about the participation of international researchers? As with previous April conferences, the organisers have decided to make use of online communication tools.

Lev Yakobson said that the conference has used the online format and video presentations before: ‘In some cases, our participants spoke at the conference while being thousands of miles away from Moscow. But previously, it was only particularly renowned international scholars who presented at the conference remotely if they were unable to attend. Now, all participants of the conference will be attending and participating remotely.’

A special option will be provided for the participants: the papers will be posted on the conference website and discussion will be conducted entirely remotely. It is important that in this case the paper is still presented to the audience of the April Conference and appreciated by it. ‘I believe we came up with the right solution to the organizational challenge we faced this spring,’ Lev Yakobson said.