Student Reference  Yulia Shimf Yulia Shimf is a graduate student in the Master’s program, held jointly by Saint Petersburg State University and Freie Universität, Berlin. Over the last two years, Yulia has proved to be an enthusiastic and well-organized student. Based on what I have seen of her work in the tutorials, she demonstrates good analytical skills, intellectual capacity and creativity in designing and fulfilling the research project on multimedia edutainment projects in global media.  The subject of edutainment inspired Yulia long before she enrolled in the master’s program. Having worked for a Moscow-based educational consultancy for over four years, Yulia received a first-hand experience in reporting about language schools, boarding schools, and universities abroad. Being half-German, half-Russian, and enrolled in the double Master’s program, Yulia have done some comparative research on German and Russian media: her term papers covered topics like ‘Comparing journalistic practices in Germany and Russia: case study of media blackout over migrant-related events in Cologne and Moscow’ and ‘From local to global: how international broadcasters promote national agenda through foreign language teaching’. In February-March 2016, Yulia was employed full-time as a journalist intern at the central desk for culture at Russia Beyond The Headlines (Moscow). She contributed to Art & Living section on rbth.com and became fascinated by this kind of media. By the second year of the Master’s program, Yulia’s theoretical foundation in comparative media studies, combined with a deep passion for education and supported by collaboration with Russia Beyond The Headlines, resulted in the comprehensive graduate paper ‘Multimedia edutainment projects in global media’. Reflective now about the Master thesis, I can say that Yulia Shimf is well-trained, ambitious, and very analytical person. She always came to the tutorials timely, prepared, and skillfully set forth her arguments during the discussion. It is also worth mentioning, that the abstracts of the thesis were well received at the table talks of the III Scientific and Practical Student Conference ‘Studying Media and Communications’ at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, while the project ‘Russian2Go’, described in the research, has been successfully implemented into the content strategy of Russia Beyond The Headlines. According to the plagiarism report, the percentage of the final text found in other sources does not exceed 5%. In short, Yulia Shimf is both scholarly and professionally entrenched, and I have no doubt that she has the skills, focus and determination to successfully complete the master’s degree in a timely fashion.   Research Supervisor: Yulia V. Kurysheva,  Associate Professor, PhD in Political Studies