The HSE Moscow Centre for Cultural Sociology carries out theoretical and empirical investigations of culture and its paramount role within contemporary societies. MCCS’s primary focus includes social inequalities and the various ways in which culture informs individuals’ identities, perceptions, rationales, actions, preferences, aspirations and decision-making patterns. This involves particular attention paid to such issues as the emotional dimension of culture, metaphors, narratives, temporality and their role in social life. This leads us towards looking into such seemingly unrelated, but in fact eminently strategic, issues as the sacred, mystery, religion, the body, medicalization and sport, among others. These and others empirical inquiries are heavily driven by theoretical concerns present in the most vibrant contemporary debates, such as those around culture and cognition, structured versus fragmented character of culture, prospects of formal methods of cultural analysis, and others. By combining theoretical and empirical studies, and qualitative and quantitative methods, MCCS seeks to advance intra- and inter-disciplinary dialogue, while providing an ecosystem for the development of state-of-the-art cultural sociology and inequality studies. CCS faculty fellow Dmitry Kurakin is the head of the Centre.