The Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, 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. 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published historical and unpublished archival texts.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.
For further information and eligibility information please see;
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/funding/details.php?funding_id=222
The deadline for applications is 17 June 2013.