On 7 September, the European University at St. Petersburg team took part in the 99th Pushkin — St. Petersburg road race. Nikita Obraztsov finished first among the EUSP team, covering 30 km in 2:29:26. University news →
In August, Nikita Obraztsov took part in the AI & Methods in Computational Communication summer school, organised by Kazakhstan Sociology Lab at Nazarbayev University in Astana. The programme covered network analysis, polarisation research, and the use of AI agents in social science research. Nikita presented a poster on his agent-based model and gave a closing talk on the final day of the school.
This summer Nikita Obraztsov gave his first talk at a major international conference: the 8th European Conference on Social Networks (EUSN 2026), held in Norrköping, Sweden. The presentation introduced an agent-based model of how religious communities maintain their religiosity under secularising pressure. The talk was delivered remotely. Slides →
Nikita Obraztsov appeared again on the Radio Mayak programme “Fiziki i Liriki”. This time the topic was religion without God: Buddhism, Daoism, and secular humanism. How does religion function when the supernatural is taken out of the picture? Listen →
On June 22 at 3:00 PM, the International Laboratory for Applied Network Research will host a seminar featuring Nikita Obraztsov, a Master’s student in Computational Sociology at the European University in St. Petersburg and a Master in Religious Studies at St. Petersburg State University. The full text can found here
On 17 June 2026, Nikita Obraztsov was a guest on the programme “Fiziki i Liriki” (Scientists and Humanists) on Radio Mayak. The conversation covered contemporary religious studies as a discipline, its research programme, and the different forms of atheism and what distinguishes modern non-belief from its historical predecessors. Listen →
My interview for the SPEECH podcast by Litres publishing is out. We talked about whether religion can be defined at all, what the “fuzzy sphere” between believers and non-believers is, why transhumanism comes closest to being a new religion, and what will happen to traditional confessions in the age of AI. Watch on YouTube → Read more →
Forbes Young published a piece by Elena Strelkova - “Stability, Silence, Community, and Psychotherapy: What Young People Are Looking for in Religion”, featuring my commentary on patchwork religiosity, the compensatory function of religious communities, and why it is too early to speak of a religious renaissance among young people. Read the article (Russian) → English translation →
On 29 May, St. Petersburg hosted the public lecture “Religion Without God” — the last of the Medio Modo series for this season. A broad range of topics, from the foundations of the sociology of religion to contemporary quasi-religious practices. What We Covered Sociology of religion: core concepts. We opened with Durkheim’s definition of religion — the distinction between the sacred and the profane as a universal foundation for any religious system. Then Robert Bellah’s civil religion: how national symbols, rituals, and holidays perform religious functions in secular societies. Berger and Luckmann on the social construction of religious reality and the process of secularisation. ...
Public lecture at Medio Modo, St. Petersburg. What if religion does not begin with belief in God? Secular meditation has conquered Silicon Valley and turned into a corporate productivity tool. Atheist churches across the world gather hundreds of people for Sunday meetings with songs, lectures, and something very much like a sermon. Harvard’s chief chaplain is an atheist. The lecture examines what happens when religion loses God but keeps everything else — where the sacred goes in a secular age, and whether it returns through the back door. ...
The European University at St. Petersburg published a news item about the results of the IV All-Russian Student Olympiad “Sociologist in the 21st Century.” I took 3rd place in the individual ranking and won in the categories Best Video Essay, Best VCIOM Analytics Report, and Best Autoethnography. Read at EUSPb →
On 7 March 2026, Nikita Obraztsov gave a lecture at Ceramania — Russia’s largest handmade ceramics festival. The topic: ‘Goddesses and Their Many Faces: Why Mythological Female Images Are More Complex Than They Seem’. Announcement →
On 2 November 2025, Nikita Obraztsov gave a talk at the online conference ‘Buddha, Brain, and the Neurophysiology of Happiness’, organised by the Tergar Meditation Centre. The talk was titled ‘How Religions Answer the Question of Meaning: Finding Common Ground in Diversity’. Other participants included neuroscientist Richard Davidson (University of Wisconsin) and meditation master Mingyur Rinpoche. Conference website →