English

Professor Asmolov Alexander – Russian psychologist, lecturer, researcher, publicist, politician; Head of the Department of Personality Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Director of the School of Anthropology of the Future of the Institute for Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), a full Member of the Russian Academy of Education, Vice-President of the Russian Psychological Society, member of the Public Council of the Russian Jewish Congress.

Key facts

Professor Asmolov is one of the leading scholars on the field on cultural-historical psychology which relies on the scientific heritage of Lev Vygotsky, Alexander Luria and Aleksei Leontiev. Asmolov is an author of more than 500 scientific publications including nine books and monographs on evolutionary perspective of the development of personality and other topics including “Personality as a subject of psychological research”, “Principles of organizing human memory: a system-activity approach to the study of cognitive processes”, “Psychology of individuality. Methodological foundations of personality development in the historical evolutionary process”, “Psychology of personality: principles of general psychological analysis. Textbook for universities”, “Cultural-historical psychology and construction of worlds”. He also published a book in English “Vygotsky today: on the verge of non-classical psychology” (1998). At the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University A.G. Asmolov takes a part in teaching of the core course of general psychology «Psychology of Personality and Individuality», as well as a special course «Historical Psychology of Personality».

Professor Asmolov is known as a visionary for humanizing education, elective education, promotes tolerance awareness in society, xenophobia prevention speaking out in a wide range of mass media. He was an academic advisor of the Federal programme for Tolerance Awareness and Extremism Prevention in Russian Society  (2002-2005). Alexander Asmolov is also a former first Deputy Minister of Education. In that position, he was a key person in facilitation reforms of Russian educational system in the middle of the 1990s.

Main areas of research interest

• Studies of the evolution of man as a unique value in the evolution of nature and the history of society;
• Development of a constructivist methodology of cognition through the perspective of a activity theory approach and historical-evolutionary analysis of complex systems in evolutionary psychology and ethology, personality psychology, cognitive psychology of activity, psychophysics of solving sensory problems, psychology of consciousness, psychology of attitude and the unconscious, psychology of intercultural communication and cultural anthropology, psychology of tolerance and negotiations, pedagogical anthropology and socio-cultural modernization of education;
• Search for ways to develop scientific schools: schools of cultural-historical psychology and psychological theory of activity L.S. Vygotsky, A.R. Luria, A.N. Leontiev; school of «activity physiology» N.A. Bernstein and the psychophysiological concept of probabilistic forecasting of the future by I.M. Feigenberg; schools of psychology of installation and the unconscious D.N. Uznadze;
• Educational policy aimed at embodying the ideas of interdisciplinary human studies in the anthropological practices of humanistic variant education and dignity pedagogy;

Awards

Honorary Worker of the Higher School of the Russian Federation (2005); recipient of the Russian Federation Government  award for Education for creating the series of works Developing tolerance awareness and preventing xenophobia  in the system of general education (2010),  Knight of the Order of Friendship (2012), the L.S. Vygotsky medal (2012) , K.D. Ushinsky medal for merits in the field of pedagogical sciences (2003); a gold medal For Achievements in Science, Russian Academy of Education (2007), Professor of the Year — 2018 in the nomination «Psychological Sciences» etc. In September 2022, by the decision of the Russian Jewish Congress, Alexander Asmolov was awarded the Tikkun Olam award for his continuous contribution to the Jewish Community in Russia.

Key articles