Emerging Indigineities in the Russian North

The Department of Anthropology is offering one 3-year PhD studentship, to start on 1st October 2013. The studentship will include full UK/EU fees, a maintenance stipend at RCUK rates, and the full ESRC fieldwork stipend. Additional funds may be available to fund conference travel and digitisation/computing costs. The studentship forms part of a 3-year ESRC funded project beginning 1 August 2013 entitled 'Etnos: A life history of the etnos concept among the Peoples of the North'.

The larger project aims to examine the status of ethnogenetic thinking in post-Soviet Russia. The 'etnos' concept, with its radical 'primordialism' has been associated strongly with Soviet statebuilding creating an unarticulated assumption that theory crumbled along with Soviet institutions. It has been one of the surprises of the post-Soviet transition that 'ethnos-style' thinking not only persists but is a vibrant part of the Russian anthropological context. This project aims to rewrite the concept in an active mood demonstrating its evocativeness both to contemporary Russian society and to the discipline as a whole. The project will therefore make use of the interpretative ethnographic techniques developed by historians of science to examine the life history and archaeology of the concept.

The studentship, entitled 'Emerging Indigineities in the Russian North' queries the claim of indigeneity which is often thought to be confined to settler states overseas. Recently, many scholars have been astounded by the growth of indigenous claims where they 'should not' exist. Rather than being trapped in time, limited to strictly enumerated groups, or being spatially encapsulated in 'salt-water' post-colonies overseas, vibrant claims to indigenous status can be found today among 'recent' African pastoralists, urban mestizo populations, and in heavily urbanized areas such as the Russian North. This studentship will investigate emergent indigineities in the urban Russian North, with special reference to how these new movements articulate new collective identities transcending traditional national narratives. The PhD candidate will work closely with community organizations that are lobbying for the recognition of their status, and will similarly ground the fieldwork in a reading of published historical and unpublished archival texts. The project will work parallel to the established team working on the history of etnos theory on a special example of etnos theorising - the indigenous case.

Eligibility:

All applicants must hold or be close to completing a postgraduate Masters degree in social and/or cultural anthropology, cultural history, or similar field. The studentships are available for full-time study only. Students from outside the UK and EU may apply, but acceptance will be conditional on the provision of the student providing funding to cover the balance between the Home/EU and Overseas fees.