Group Members

Florian has done research in many regions of the Russian North since the mid 1990s, and has ever since enjoyed the particularities of how people contemporarily and historically organize their life in this vast area. Much of his research and publications are on the encounter of (extractive) industries with indigenous animal-based livelihoods and how its governing changes the livelihoods of Arctic peoples, both indigenous and local. This research - often using a mix of participant observation and oral history as a method - contributes to broader theoretical debates on worldviews of extractivism and human-animal adaptability.

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tel. +358 400 138 807

Ria-Maria is a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna. Her research interests revolve around Arctic youth well-being, with a particular focus on immigrant youth and their cultural adaptation processes. She is funded by the fellowship programme ´uni:docs´ by the University of Vienna and contributes as a guest researcher at the Arctic Centre to the WOLLIE project by conducting research in Pyhäjoki, Kemijärvi and Kolari on Finnish youth´s perceptions of well-being.

ria-maria.adams at ulapland.fi

Lukas holds a Master’s degree from the University of Basel (Switzerland) in Eastern European History and Russian Language and Literature. During his studies Lukas specialised in oral history, and his Master’s thesis is an oral history-based inquiry into the change of the life conditions of the Sámi living on the Kola Peninsula during the 20th century. After his graduation Lukas worked as an Embassy translator and interpreter in Moscow. 

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tel. +358 40 484 4418 

Stephan got his phD from the University of Leipzig with a thesis on public and private spheres among the West Siberian Khanty under the impact of large scale oil extraction. He has been working in the Russian North since the early 1990s and has also field experience in post Soviet Central Asia. His main interests are in the analysis of privacy and intimacy, the theory of hiding and exhibiting, taiga reindeer herding, and the impacts of extractive industries in the Russian North. He worked in the ORHELIA project on the relations between states and their northernmost residents with a focus on the European Nentsy.

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tel. +358 40 484 4079

Panu got his PhD from the University of Helsinki in social and cultural anthropology with a thesis on cooperation and reciprocity in the Skolt Sami reindeer herding community of Sevettijärvi Northern Finland and the community’s relation to state administration. His research interest is directed to productive processes and human relations in the north.

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tel.  +358 40 484 4158

Evelyn has a degree in physics, an mphil in polar studies from the University of Cambridge, and a masters in indigenous studies from the University of Tromso. She is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, Scott Polar Research Institute supervised by Florian Stammler and Piers Vitebsky. She has carried out extensive fieldwork among animal husbanders in Siberia and Evenki reindeer herders and hunters in the Nizhnaya Tunguska river basin in Irkutsk region. Her work focuses on human-animal-environment relations and processes of mutual learning, enskilment, taming and ‘symbiotic domestication’, partly in the framework of the ArcArk project.
evelanderer()googlemail.com

Roza Laptander's research interests are based on sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, documentating the Nenets language and spoken history of the Western Siberian Nenets. In her work she describes the Nenets' memories about the past and their present life in the Yamal tundra. It shows that spoken stories and interviews concerning big changes on the tundra reflect a general mechanism of making Nenets official historical narratives. Through analyzing silence in the example of the Yamal Nenets people stories, Laptander studied the role of silence and silencing offering a new approach to understanding how small indigenous societies keep memories and stories about their past. She is a member of the Anthropology Research Group and the Global Change Research Group.

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Nuccio got his PhD from the University of Manchester in Social Anthropology with a thesis on perception of landscape and concepts of space among Sami people in Northeastern Finland, where his regional specialization lies; in particular he has done fieldwork with Sámi reindeer herders in Sallivaara Reindeeer Association. The research focused on people’s relations with the landscape and on its influence in fashioning their sense of identity. More general issues of perception of the landscape, place and mobility play a prominent role in the research.

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tel. +358 40 484 4295

Nina Meschtyb got her phD from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Ethnology and Anthropology. She has extensive fieldwork experience in Russia, among European and Yamal Nenets reindeer herders, and also in Murmansk and Amur regions. Her main interests are in postsocialist transformation, gender in the tundra, cultural impacts of industrialisation, and relations of people to their authorities. She is also an excellent field photographer and has contributed to exhibitions on- and offline internationally. In ORHELIA she worked with Kola Sami on their perception of and relations to the Soviet and post Soviet state through oral history and biographic interview analysis.
Email: meschtyb(at)mail.ru.
tel. +358 40 484 4078

Ayonghe holds a Master’s degree from the University of Lapland (Finland) in Media Studies. He also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Buea (Cameroon). He has done research in forestry and wildlife conservation, tourism management, and participatory development. Ayonghe currently works as a doctoral researcher of Sociology and member of Anthropology Research Group at Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland. He now specializes in co-management of national parks from a perspective of integrating local knowledge into forestry and wildlife conservation. His doctoral project addresses the case of Mount Cameroon National Park and its adjacent Communities in West Africa.

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tel. +358 404844231

Anna has specialized in Arctic anthropology since 1995. Her fieldwork to date has been in different Arctic regions of Fennoscandia, Russian North and Northern Canada, although she has developing interests in the South of Argentina (Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia). Her research interests include social life of climate change models (Arctic coastal communities, fisheries/aquaculture/tourism sectors, anthropology of seawater), community sustainability, and anthropology of disaster (flooding), concept of indigeneity, space and place, cross-border relations, food and migration studies.

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tel. +358 400 882 065

MSSc Henri Wallen is a doctoral researcher working on his thesis on the Pre-Development Social Impacts of Mining projects. He has been working on environmental issues related to extractive industries and reindeer herding. Currently he’s taking part in the multidisciplinary research project “Domestication in Action” based at the department of Archaeology at the University of Oulu. His research interests also include computational methods in social sciences and applications of complex systems theory.

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tel. +358 40 484 4239
Twitter: @henriwallen