Recruitment Campaign 2025: How HSE Attracts Top International Talent

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For nearly two decades, HSE University’s international recruitment programmes have brought highly qualified professionals from the global academic job market to Russia—from recent PhD graduates of leading universities to experienced international scholars. On September 1, 2025, the university expects 50 new international faculty and researchers to join its academic team.

The primary aim of international academic recruitment is to form a teaching and research staff capable of carrying out globally recognised research and delivering HSE University’s degree programmes at an internationally competitive level.

The selection process for the 2025 international recruitment campaign concluded in April. Candidates were chosen for two flagship initiatives—the tenure-track international faculty programme and the international postdoctoral fellowship programme. HSE expects to welcome 50 international specialists this autumn: 15 under the tenure-track programme and 35 as international postdocs.

These new colleagues are graduates of PhD programmes at 50 leading universities, including the University of California, Los Angeles (USA), the University of Oxford (UK), Harvard University (USA), the Free University of Brussels (Belgium), the University of Toronto (Canada), the University of Southern Denmark, George Washington University (USA), the University of Pittsburgh (USA), the University of São Paulo (Brazil), the University of Bordeaux (France), Boston College (USA), the Free University of Berlin (Germany), the Indian Statistical Institute, Jawaharlal Nehru University (India), Beijing Institute of Technology (China), and many others.

Nikita Anisimov

HSE Rector Nikita Anisimov highlighted a notable feature of the 2025 recruitment campaign. ‘Of the 15 international specialists joining us on September 1 through the international tenure-track programme, nine—that is 60%—are Russian citizens who graduated from top foreign universities. This confirms that our international recruitment efforts also fulfil an important national goal: they support the return of highly qualified specialists to their homeland, to Russia. We are truly pleased with this result. At the same time, the international postdoctoral fellowship programme continues to attract primarily foreign nationals—graduates of top-tier PhD programmes. This year, the vast majority of those who accepted postdoc offers from HSE hold citizenship from friendly countries,’ shared Nikita Anisimov.

Vice Rector Alexey Koshel also gave details about the selection principles and results of HSE’s 2025 international faculty recruitment campaign.

Alexey Koshel

‘This year, members of the subject-specific selection committees and the International Recruitment Committee faced a welcome challenge: the 2025 campaign attracted an exceptionally strong pool of candidates, both in terms of numbers and academic quality. Applications for the international tenure-track faculty programme nearly doubled compared to 2024. As in previous years, the majority of applications—44%—came from candidates in Economics and Finance. Business & Management and Computer Science followed with 10% each, while Linguistics and International Relations & World Economy each accounted for 6.5% of the applications. The remaining 23% were distributed across other disciplines. It has also become a tradition for some of the strongest international postdocs to transition into the tenure-track programme—this year, three such candidates were selected. Applications for the international postdoctoral programme increased by nearly 25%, and the overall academic profiles of candidates were very strong,’ said the HSE vice rector.

As Alexey Koshel explained, ‘this year’s successful recruitment campaign can be attributed to both a favourable shift in the global academic job market and HSE University’s strong international visibility and reputation as a trusted and respected employer.’

HSE University runs its international recruitment programmes on a competitive basis across all its campuses. The university currently operates several successful initiatives to attract international talent, including the International Tenure-track Programme, the International Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme, the Part-time Seniors scheme for leading international scholars, and the Digital Professors programme. Applications for the Digital Professors programme are submitted online via the programme’s dedicated webpage (in Russian).