I would like to express my gratitude to Nina Yuryevna, as well as my admiration for her idea of Nomadic University and for the principles and values behind it.
I attended the course on civic communities. This is definitely not a typical university course where you come with a notebook and diligently write down a lecture — it is a lively discussion of topics that matter personally to both the lecturer and the students. At the same time, the course has a clear structure, and Nina Yuryevna offered us a wide range of approaches for independent research.
And this is where the most wonderful part begins! I defended two theses at two universities with very strong reputations. But only during consultations with Nina Yuryevna, while we sat together formulating the problem, choosing and applying the methodology, and painfully trying to draw conclusions on a topic that is personally meaningful to me, did I finally understand what meaningful research activity really means — research that contains value and an answer to the question “why.” And that answer is not “because these are the rules.”
Overall, for me, Nomadic University is about values, about freedom, and about the victory of substance over formalism.