Search by section

Nikolai Vakhtin lectures at the Pushkin Museum

30.01.2023
On January 18, Professor of the Faculty of Anthropology Nikolai Vakhtin gave a lecture "Writing on Birch Bark, or How to Negotiate without a Common Language" at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. The meeting was held as part of an educational program timed to coincide with the exhibition “Universal Language” (December 16, 2022 – March 19, 2023).   
video

New issue of "Anthropological Forum" published

01.07.2022
The Journal opens with a “Declaration on the Establishment of a New Association of Academic Journals in the Humanities”. The decision to establish the Association was made at the Round Table "Russian Journals in the Humanities in a Changing Academic Landscape,"  held at the European University on March 25, 2022. The declaration was signed by the editors of more than 20 Russian academic journals in the humanities and social sciences.

Spatializing Culture: the Ethnography of Space and Place

11.06.2019
This talk offers an in-depth analysis of “spatializing culture,” an idea that grew out of my work on the Latin American plaza (Low 2000) and Deborah Pellow’s (2002) ethnography of West African socio-spatial organization and institutions. Through subsequent research and theory-building “spatializing culture” has evolved into a multi-dimensional framework that includes social production, social construction, embodied, discursive, emotive and affective, as well as translocal approaches to space and place.

EKATERINA RUDNEVA - CANDIDATE OF SCIENCES IN PHILOLOGY!

22.05.2019
Congratulations to EUSP Department of Anthropology graduate Ekaterina Rudneva on the successful defense of her dissertation for the degree of candidate of sciences in philology.   On May 16, 2019, Ekaterina Rudneva has defended her dissertation "Strategii lingvisticheskoi vezhlivosti v spontannom rechevom vzaimodeistvii" [Strategies of Linguistic Politeness in Spontaneous Speech Interaction] at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow).

SEXUAL LIBERATION, SOCIALIST STYLE: Science and Politics in Communist Czechoslovakia

15.04.2019
Did women have better sex under socialism? While individual experience may vary, we can get a vivid picture from expert discourses on female pleasure and male deviance, from state policies and expert input into these policies, together with responses by people who were subject to all these interventions. This talk approaches sexuality as one of the most important terrains in the larger societal project of modernity. By tracing sexual tropes, mores and practices as they change across time and place, one can grasp the changing accents of modern societies.

WHO DESIRES FEMALE DESIRE? Cultural assumptions underlying female sexual interest disorder

04.12.2018
After the great success of Viagra, pharmaceutical companies have set a new goal: the "female Viagra", i.e. a pill for hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), the most commonly diagnosed female sexual dysfunction. Each subsequent proposal for the treatment of low desire showed the process of disease mongering in all its glory and simultaneous attempts to strengthen the hypotheses about its biological basis: depending of the drug manufacturer HSDD was supposed to be due to androgen deficiency, disordered pelvic blood circulation, or neurotransmitters imbalance.

HOW COLLABORATIVE, BOTTOM-UP APPROACHES CAN PRODUCE EFFECTIVE HEALTH INTERVENTIONS — Medical Anthropology and the Case of HIV Prevention in Ukraine

13.11.2018
Ukraine continues to face one of the worst HIV epidemics in Europe. To date, prevention efforts there have largely consisted of information dissemination and needle/syringe exchange and distribution. In an effort to introduce new, culturally relevant and effective prevention strategies into Ukraine, a team of medical anthropologists and sociologists from the U.S. and Ukraine worked with local HIV activists in Ukraine to create and pilot novel, bottom-up interventions for drug users based on U.S. behavior change theories.

NATIONAL TREASURE OR QUACKERY? Changing attitudes to folk and complementary medicine in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

29.04.2018
In my presentation I will discuss how the official attitudes to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and particularly to folk healing have been changing in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan since proclamation of their independence. Initially, these countries, similar to the other newly independent Central Asian states, strove to confirm their legitimacy through referring to the richness of their cultural heritage, including traditional medical knowledge and practices.

TEMPORALITIES AND ONTOLOGIES OF HARM: The 2009 H1N1 Pandemic and the Case of Vaccine-Associated Narcolepsy

26.03.2018
This presentation introduces the initial findings of my new research project on cultural debates about vaccines. The paper focuses on the debates surrounding the connection between the Pandemrix vaccine used in the mass vaccinations in Europe during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the reported increase in narcolepsy among vaccinated children especially in Finland, Sweden, Ireland and the UK.

MAKING GENETIC ANCESTRY: Population Genetics and Belonging

26.03.2018
This talk will reflect on the key themes of my book, Population Genetics and Belonging (Palgrave Macmillan 2018). I explore how population genetics has emerges as a means of enacting belonging in contemporary technoscientific societies. I will reflect on the contradictions that underlie the project of discovering genetic roots, focusing on the tensions between global, national, communal and personal genetic belonging. I argue that genetic roots are not discovered – they are enacted through a range of technological, discursive, affective and material practices.

EVGENIIA ZAKHAROVA - CANDIDATE OF SCIENCES IN HISTORY

30.12.2017
EUSP Anthropology Department graduate Evgeniia Zakharova defended her dissertation "Muzhskie kvartal'nye soobshchestva Tbilisi: struktura i funktsionirovanie [Street-Corner Societies of Tbilisi: Structure and Functioning]" at the Dissertation Council of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Kunstkamera” on December 18, 2017. Evgeniia Zakharova was awarded the academic degree of candidate of sciences in history. The dissertation was written under the supervision of EUSP Professor Ilia Utekhin.

DARIA DUBOVKA - CANDIDATE OF SCIENCES IN HISTORY

30.12.2017
EUSP Anthropology Department graduate Daria Dubovka defended her dissertation "Povsednevnye distsiplinarnye praktiki i religioznaia refleksiia v pravoslavnykh zhenskikh monastyriakh postsovetskoi Rossii: etnograficheskie aspekty [Everyday Disciplinary Practices and Religious Reflection in Orthodox Women's Monasteries of Post-Soviet Russia: Ethnographic Aspects]" at the Dissertation Council of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Kunstkamera” on December 18, 2017.

IULIIA ANDREEVA – CANDIDATE OF SCIENCES IN HISTORY

09.10.2017
EUSP Anthropology Department graduate Iuliia Andreeva defended her dissertation “Proekty preobrazovaniia mira v novom religioznom dvizhenii "Anastasiia": antropologicheskie aspekty religii N'iu-Eidzh v sovremennoi Rossii [Projects of the Transformation of the World in the New Religious Movement “Anastasia”: Anthropological Aspects of the New Age Religion in Modern Russia]” at the Dissertation Council of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Kunstkamera” on Septem