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Tatiana V. Akhutina, Ph.D. in Psychology, Professor, is the head of the Laboratory of Neuropsychology in Lomonosov Moscow State University. She worked with A. Luria and L. Tsvetkova on the neuropsychological mechanisms of dynamic aphasia. In 1967 she started to work with A.A. Leontiev and published the article “Mechanism of speech production based on the study of aphasia”. A.A. Leontiev and T.V. Ryabova (Akhutina) were editors of seven books devoted to psycholinguistics and teaching of foreign languages. She was co-editor of Luria’s book "The basic problems of Neurolinguistics" (1975). In 1989 she published a book titled “Language Production: Neurolinguistic analysis of syntax”, where she compared production, comprehension and verification of syntactic constructions in patients with different kinds of aphasia.
In her works she has further developed ideas of L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria on thought and language. Her model of language production is very well known among Russian linguists and psychologists. Her current field of interest is in child neuropsychology and neurolinguistics. She has published a series of books introducing a new neuropsychological model of intervention for children with learning disabilities ("School of Attention"). She has a wide range of publications in Russian, English, Spanish and German. In the USA, the Journal of Russian and East European Psychology dedicated a special issue to her research on psychology of language and neuropsychology in 2003.
Yrjö Engeström is Professor of Adult Education and Director of the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research at University of Helsinki. He is also Professor of Communication at University of California, San Diego, where he served as Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition from 1990 to 1995. He is Honorary Professor in the School of Education at University of Birmingham, UK.
Professor Engström works within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory. He is known for his theory of expansive learning. He studies transformations in work and organizations, combining micro level analysis of discourse and interaction with historical analysis and modeling of organizations as activity systems working through developmental contradictions.
Professor Engeström’s research groups use intervention tools such as the Change Laboratory, inspired by Vygotsky’s method of dual stimulation, to facilitate and analyze the redesign of activity systems by practitioners. His current research is focused on health care organizations, a bank, and a telecommunications company striving toward new forms of co-configuration and knotworking.
Professor Engeström’s recent books include Cognition and Communication at Work (edited with David Middleton, 1996), Perspectives on Activity Theory (edited with Reijo Miettinen and Raija-Leena Punamäki, 1999), and Between School and Work: New Perspectives on Transfer and Boundary Crossing (edited with Terttu Tuomi-Gröhn, 2003). He has just finished a new book, Collaborative Expertise: Expansive Learning in Medical Work, to be published by Cambridge University Press.
Dmitry A. Leontiev, Ph.D., Dr.Sc., Professor of Psychology, Moscow State University, Russia, Vice-President of Moscow division of Russian Psychological Society, Board Member of International Society for Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy. Professor Leontiev is an expert in personality theory, research and assessment, psychology of art and psychology of advertising. His teaching and research topics vary from assessment techniques to personality theories, from advertising to existential issues; he also does much editorial and publishing work introducing classical and contemporary Western authors to Russian readers.
After his recent book "The Psychology of Personal Meaning" (1999), where he developed a comprehensive theory of meaning-based regulation of activity and mental processes in humans, Dmitry A. Leontiev is focusing at the existential approach to the autodetermined human being as complementary to the traditional mainstream approach to the determined human being. He has become the founder and the head of Institute of Existential Psychology and Life Enhancement (EXPLIEN) in Moscow (2001).
Dorothy Robbins has a B.A. from the University of Arkansas in Sociology and Philosophy, M.A. from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in German and Spanish, and Ph.D from the University of Frankfurt, Germany in second language acquisition. During this time she worked and studied Paulo Freire. She then spent a year at London University, studying with H. G. Widdowson and B. Bernstein. In 1987, Jim Lantolf introduced her to the works of L. S. Vygotsky, and in 1993 she met A. A. Leontiev at a conference for professors of German at Leipzig, Germany. She then became interested in Russian psycholinguistics, with visits to Moscow, where she got to know A. A. Leontiev better. In 1999, she received a senior Fulbright Fellowship, and worked at A. A. Leontiev's Tolstoy Institute of Foreign Languages, which was housed in Davydov's School 91. During this stay she started working with Elena Kravtsova, Director of the Vygotsky Institute of Psychology, Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. She also spent time with Dr. Kravtsova's Golden Key School team in Moscow, Belaya Kalytva, Azov, Krasnayarsk. She is on the board of the L. S. Vygotsky Society. Robbins also works with an orphanage in Vyschgorod, 120 km. west of Moscow.
Her books include Vygotsky's psychology-philosophy: A metaphor for language theory and learning (2001), Voices within Vygotsky's non-classical psychology: Past, present, future (edited with Anna Stetsenko, 2002), Vygotsky's and A.A. Leontiev's Semiotics and Psycholinguistics: Applications for Education, Second Language Acquisition, and Theories of Language (2003), and A.R. Luria and Contemporary Psychology: Festschrift Celebrating the Centennial of the Birth of Luria (edited with T. Akhutina, J. Glozman and L. Moskovich (2004).
Anna Stetsenko is Professor and Program Head of the PhD Program
in Developmental Psychology at the Graduate Center of The City University
of New York. She is also on the faculty of the PhD Program in Urban Education
and the Center for the Study of Women and Society of the same University.
She earned her Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1984, and is now widely
recognized for her research in developmental psychology. Her work cuts across
multicultural and multitheoretical lines, and she is fluent in English, Russian,
German, and French. She is today acknowledged as an influential representative
of Vygotskian activity theory, which has become one of the most important
psychology theories worldwide. Her articles on cultural-historical activity
theory (beginning from early 1980s), including those on the topics of the
self, language development, preverbal meanings, learning and teaching, and
the history of psychology, expanded into new theoretical and empirical areas,
and her extensive cross-cultural research in the domain of school performance
is now recognized as some of the most important of its kind. Her articles
appear in major journals in developmental and social psychology and she is
the author of numerous book chapters, the book "The birth of consciousness"
and edited volume on Vygotsky's project. She is on editorial boards of international
journals and is a member of various international expert committees in psychology.
Before coming to The Graduate Center, Professor Stetsenko taught at Moscow
State University and the University of Berne, Switzerland, and was a postdoctoral
scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education.