Faculty Member, History and International Studies
Thesis Title: Between Indigeneity and Nationality: The Politics of Culture and Nature in Russia's Diamond Province
About
I have just completed a PhD in cultural anthropology at the University of British Columbia. My dissertation was entitled "Between Indigeneity and Nationality: The Politics of Culture and Nature in Russia's Diamond Province." It builds on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), an ethnically-defined province of Northeastern Siberia that produces almost 25% of the world's diamonds. In it, I examine the ways that emergent indigenous identities are intertwined with frameworks of national and and ethnic identity rooted in Soviet administrative practices and ideology.
