Several alumni of the institute were recognised at the National Student Research Competition

The Department of Philosophy and Semiotics is delighted to announce that in the 2024 Estonian National Student Research Competition, our former students received several awards and recognitions in the Humanities and Arts category for their thesis. We warmly congratulate our alumni and their supervisors on these outstanding achievements! This year, the national competition's prize fund totaled over €185,500. In total, 102 prizes were awarded, including 57 national awards and 45 special prizes. The national awards were granted across three levels of study and six scientific fields.

The doctoral dissertation by Tuuli Pern, defended last year, titled “Affective-imaginative modelling in semiotic context: A Vichian perspective”, supervised by Professor of Biosemiotics Kalevi Kull, was awarded third place in the doctoral thesis category of the Humanities and Arts field.

In the master’s thesis category, third place was awarded to Mykyta Kabrel for his thesis “How does psychotherapy work? A cognitive neuroscience-based framework for understanding therapeutic change”, supervised by Professor Jaan Aru and Professor of Philosophy of Mind Bruno Mölder.

Additionally, Oleksii Popovych received a special recognition in the same category for his thesis “Representations of Human-Alloanimal Relations in Wartime: A Case Study of a Ukrainian Zoo”, supervised by Research Fellow in Semiotics Nelly Mäekivi.

Pärtel Piirimäe, Professor of Intellectual History, received a certificate of appreciation from the Estonian Academy of Sciences' Constitutional Law Endowment for supervising the doctoral research of Timo Aava, a PhD student at the University of Vienna. The thesis, titled "Minority Nations and the State: Non-Territorial Autonomy in Estonia during the Late Tsarist Period and the Interwar Era," was co-supervised by Börries Kuzmany. The doctoral dissertation was awarded the Uno Lõhmus Special Prize in the doctoral dissertations category by the Constitutional Law Endowment of the Estonian Academy of Sciences.