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You are in:  Home » Staff and students » Research staff » Olga Ulturgasheva

Olga Ulturgasheva MPhil PhD

Research Associate

Anthropology and human geography of Arctic regions; anthropology of childhood and youth

Career

• 2008 – present. Arts and Social Sciences Research Fellowship at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge
• 2008 – present. Research Associate. Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

Qualifications

• PhD. University of Cambridge. 2008
• M.Phil. University of Cambridge. 2002
• BA. Yakutsk State University, Russia. 1997

Research

Olga works on the anthropology of communities in the Arctic regions. She is currently involved in two international research projects exploring cultural patterns of resilience and contemporary challenges faced by indigenous youth in their transition to adulthood among Alaskan Yup'ik and Inupiat, Canadian Inuit, Norwegian Saami and Siberian Eveny (see Current and Recent research projects). She has carried out fieldwork for a decade in Siberia on childhood, youth, religion, oral tradition, memory and reindeer herding. She is a co-editor of Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Berghahn 2012). Her ethnographic monograph with Berghahn Books is titled Narrating the Future in Siberia: Childhood, Adolescence and Autobiography among the Eveny (2012).

Publications

Selected publications

• Narrating the Future in Siberia: Childhood, Adolescence and Autobiography among the Eveny. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books. 2012. ISBN 978-0-85745-766-0.http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=UlturgashevaNarrating
• Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. Co-editor with Brightman, M and V. Grotti. London, New York: Berghahn Books. 2012. ISBN 978-0-85745-468-3.http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=BrightmanAnimism
• Happy Futures in Post-Socialist Anti-Utopia: Topography of Imagination in Northestern Siberia. In Ssorin-Chaikov, N (Ed.). Topography of Happiness: Ethnographic Contours of Modernity. Moscow: New Literary Observer. (in press)
• Navigating International, Interdisciplinary, Collaborative Inquiry: Phase 1 Process in the Circumpolar Indigenous Pathways to Adulthood Project. (Co-authors Wexler, L., Kral, M., Allen, J., Mohatt, G. and K.Nystad). In Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. 2011. Vol. 4 (1): 50-59.
• Shamanism, Ecology and Invisible Worlds: the Place of Non-humans in Indigenous ontologies. (Co-authors Brightman, M. and V. Grotti) in Brightman, M, Grotti, V.E. and O.Ulturgasheva (eds) Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. ISBN 978-0-85745-766-0
• Revisiting the Animism versus Totemism Debate: Fabricating Persons among Eveny and Chukchi of Northeastern Siberia. (Co-author Willerslev, R) in Brightman, M, Grotti, V.E., Ulturgasheva, O. (eds) Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood in the Shamanic Ecologies of Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia, Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. ISBN 978-0-85745-766-0
• "Personhood and 'frontier' in contemporary Amasonia and Siberia". (Co-authors Birghtman, M and V. Grotti) in Laboratorium. Russian Review of Social Research. Thematic issue: "Russia/CIS/Latin America: Comparative Studies in Post-Authoritarian Transformation". 2010. Vol.2, no.3: 5-16.
• Introduction: rethinking the 'frontier' in Amazonia and Siberia: extractive economies, indigenous politics and social transformations. Co-editor with Brightman, M and V, Grotti. Special edition of Cambridge Anthropology, Vol. 26, Number 2, 2006/2007
• Willerslev, R. & O. Ulturgasheva 2006-7. The sable frontier: the Siberian fur trade as montage. In M. Brightman, V. Grotti & O. Ulturgasheva (eds) Rethinking the "frontier" in Amazonia and Siberia: extractive economies, indigenous politics and social transformations. Special edition of Cambridge Anthropology 26 (2): 79-101.
• "Ideas of the future among young Eveny in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)", in Trudel, Francois (ed.), Building capacity in Arctic societies: Dynamics and shifting perspectives. 2005. Quebec: CIÉRA, Universite Laval, pp. 303-313.

Selected conferences and seminar papers (unpublished):

• Conference paper "Adolescence and Resilience-shaping Processes among the Siberian Eveny" for a panel session 'New Arctic, New Adolescence: Outcomes of Social Change on Contemporary Youth Experience and Resilience Strategies among Inupiat, Eveny, Yup'ik, Saami and Inuit', 18^th Inuit Studies Conference, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, USA. October, 2012.
• Conference paper "Surviving Feelings in the Arctic: A Comparative Study of Emotional Socialization and Movement in Siberian Eveny and Alaskan Yup'ik Adolescence" for a panel session 'Indigenous Youth and the Politics of the Future in the Americas', 54^th Congress of Americanists, University of Vienna, Austria. 19.07.2012.
• Conference paper "Reindeer and Human Personhood in Children's Visions of the Future among Siberian Reindeer Herders" for anthropological section 'Altaic Childhood: The Making of Humans in Inner Asia', the Asia and Pacific Network Congress, CNRS, Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale, Paris (France). 14.09.2011.
• Seminar paper 'Haunted Sociality and Legacy of GULAG in Northeastern Siberia" for Senior Seminar Series at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK. 22.03.2010.

• Research Seminar paper 'Children's futures and parents' pasts: agency and imagination in a reindeer herding community in Northeastern Siberia', Department of Social Anthropology, Brunel University. 11.03.2010

• Research Seminar Paper 'Wandering Spirits of the Dead: Ghosts and Memory about GULAG in Northeastern Siberia' for the Ethnicity and Identity Seminar Series at Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, on 'The Identity of Ghosts: Haunting, Corporeality and the Spectre' (University of Oxford), January 2009.

Teaching

• Teaching, MPhil course in Polar Studies, University of Cambridge, 2012-2013
• Internal Examiner for Undergarduate dissertations in Russian Studies and MPhil course in Polar Studies, University of Cambridge, 2011-2012.
• Geographical tripos, Part II, Human Geography of the Arctic regions, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Lent-Easter terms. 2011-2012.
• Undergraduate course Part II A, Kinship and Economics paper and S3 Theory, Methods and Enquiry in Social Anthropology, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Lent-Easter terms, 2011-2012.
• Geographical Tripos, Part II, Siberia and Russian North. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, May-June 2007
• Supervising students for MPhil in Russian Studies, Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge, October - November 2006
• Teaching, Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge. Seeing Through Other Eyes: An Introduction to Social Anthropology. September, 2006
• Supervision: Geographical Tripos, Part II, Human Geography of the Arctic Regions. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. October, 2005 – May, 2006
• Lecture 6: Siberia and Russian North: reindeer herding and hunting communities. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. March, 20, 2006

External activities

• Fellow of Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 2011-present
• Senior Member and College Associate of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge
• Treasurer of Wolfson College Ki-Aikido society, 2008-present
• Member of the Art Committee and Official Fellowship Committee (Clare Hall, University of Cambridge), 2009-2011
• American Anthropological Association membership, 2009
• Co-organiser of an international conference "Humans, animals, plants and things: personhood in contemporary Amazonia and Siberia", Musée du Quai Branly, Paris (France). June 22-23, 2008. (Co-organisers Dr Marc Brightman, Oxford Brookes University and Dr Vanessa Elisa Grotti, University of Oxford)
• Convenor and chair of one-day symposium on "Prospects for collaborative/interdisciplinary study of Arctic indigenous youth: resilience strategies and ideas of wellbeing" with international scholars from the US, Canada and Norway, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, May 2007
• Session organiser "Forging one's own future: indigenous childhood and youth in the Arctic" and speaker on "Reindeer as a Developmental Metaphor: Eveny children socialisation in the forest" at Annual meeting of Alaska Anthropological Association (Fairbanks, US), March, 2007
• Administrative Secretary for BOREAS programme, Arctic Humanities and Social Science research conference, European Science Foundation, October 2006
• Convenor of one-day workshop "The frontier in Amazonia and Siberia: extractive economies, indigenous politics and social transformation", Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, June 2006
• Work as a Russian-English interpreter for international workshop "Trans-sectoral Partnerships, Sustainability Research and the Oil and Gas Industry in Russia" (Cambridge, UK). October 2004