Academic Career

Ph.D. 1998 University of Wisconsin Madison (Cultural Anthropology) with
Graduate Certificate in Russian and East European Studies
M.A. 1994 Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Anthropology)
B.A. 1982 University of Michigan Ann Arbor (Communication) 

 

Research Interests

·Russia, Eastern Europe, and other (formerly) socialist societies; social theory and critical ethnography; political and economic anthropology;Russia's emergence as an international aid donor; international development projects, humanitarian aid, and charity; anthropology of religion and Christianity, esp. in urban settings. Expertise on the circumpolar Arctic, northern indigenous peoples, and reindeer herding communities; geographical specialisations in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Russian Arctic.

Publications

2007 "Subversion of indigenous activism: Chukotka’s indigenous intellectuals in the 1990s." Invited for special issue of Études/Inuit/Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1-2, guest edited by Yvon Csonka
2006 “’The Last Kulak’ and other stories of post-privatization life in Chukotka’s tundra.” Invited for special issue of Nomadic Peoples, Vol. 10, No. 2, guest edited by Hugh Beach and Florian Stammler.
2005 The Predicament of Chukotka’s Indigenous Movement: Post-Soviet Activism in the Russian Far North. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2004 “Chukotkan Reindeer Husbandry in the Twentieth Century: In the Image of the Soviet Economy.” In Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: Knowing & Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North, ed. by D. Anderson and M. Nuttall, pp. 136-153. Oxford: Berghahn Press.
2003 “Volga Farmers and Arctic Herders: Common (post)Socialist experiences in rural Russia.” In The Postsocialist Agrarian Question: Property Relations and the Rural Condition, ed. by Chris Hann and the Property Relations Group, pp. 293-320, Vol. I in the series Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia. Muenster: Lit Verlag.
2003 Patty A. Gray, Nikolai Vakhtin and Peter Schweitzer, “Who owns Siberian ethnography? A critical assessment of a re-internationalized field.” Sibirica, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 194-216.
2002 Patty A. Gray and Florian Stammler, “Siberia Caught between Collapse and Continuity,” Max Planck Research: Science Magazine of the Max Planck Society, 3/2002, pp. 54-61.
2000 "Chukotkan Reindeer Husbandry in the Post-Socialist Transition," Polar Research, Vol.19, No.1, pp. 31-38.
1997 "Snezhnoe: Where East and West Collide." Transitions: Changes in Post-Communist Societies, Vol.4, No. 6, pp. 96-100.

BOOK AND FILM REVIEWS
2007 Review of: Reindeer-herders: Field-Notes from the Kola Peninsula (1994-95), by Yulian Konstantinov. Anthropos, Vol. 102, No. 2, August 2007.
2007 Review of: In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman, a film by Anya Bernstein. Visual Anthropology, Vol. 20, No. 1, January-February 2007.
2006 Review of: Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia, by Piers Vitebsky. Reviewed in the books section of the website of Soyuz: The Research Network for Postsocialist Studies.
http://www.uvm.edu/~soyuz
2004 Review of: Who Owns the Past? The Politics of Time in ‘Model’ Bulgarian Village, by Deema Kaneff. Reviewed in the books section of the website of Soyuz: The Research Network for Postsocialist Studies.
2002 Review of: The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A Siberian Saga in Global Perspective, by Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer. American Ethnologist, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 213-14.
2001 Review of: Siberian Survival: the Nenets and Their Story, by Andrei V. Golovnev and Gail Osherenko. American Anthropologist, Vol. 103, No. 1, pp. 249-50.
2001 Review of: Antler on the Sea: The Yup’ik and Chukchi of the Russian Far East, by Anna Kerttula. American Ethnologist, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 957-58.
 

Papers Delivered

INVITED LECTURES

2007 “The Study of Lived Experience in Siberia: Ethnographic Approaches.” Keynote address presented at the conference “The Ethnohistory and Archaeology of Northern Eurasia: Theory, Methods and Practice,” Irkutsk, Russia, May 2007.
2006 “Anthropology and Postsocialism: Ethnographic Study of Inverted Worlds.” Lecture presented to the Anthropology Seminar of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, February 2006.
2006 “Researching Marginal Peoples on the Margins of Putin’s Empire: An Ethnographic Reflection on Post-Soviet Life in Chukotka.” Lecture presented in the Lecture Series of the Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin Madison, February 2006.
2005 “Current Issues Facing Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Far East.” Presented at “Russia in Asia,” a Faculty Development Workshop at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, AK, May 2005
2002 “Methodology in Political Anthropology,” series of three lectures presented at the European University of St. Petersburg, Russia, April 2002.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
2007 “Missionaries, Humanitarian Aid, and Accompanying Ideologies: The Economic Impact of Missionary Activity in the Russian Far East.” Paper presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 2007, Washington, D.C.
2005a “City in the Tundra: Construction, Ruin, and Reconstruction of a Socialist City in the Russian Far North.” Paper presented in the panel “Cities Ruined, Dilapidated, Reconstructed and Rebuilt: Ethnographies of Urban Transformation” at the 37th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, November 2005, Salt Lake City, Utah.
2005b “’We Have Forgotten the Taste of Bread’: Reindeer Herders’ Expectations about Subsistence and the World’s Expectations about Them.” Paper presented in the panel “Socialist Advances and Postsocialist Retreats: Rethinking Social Transformation through Food” at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 2005, Washington, D.C.
2004a “The Effects of Russian Economic Reform on a Reindeer Herding Village in Chukotka.” Paper presented at the 19th International Abashiri Symposium, October 2004, Abashiri, Hokkaido, Japan.
2004c “The Legacy of Soviet Boundary-Making in the Russian North: From ‘National Regions’ to a ‘Farce of Sovereignties’.” Paper presented in the panel “Boundaries Among Kin: Geographic, Linguistic, and Ethnic Boundary-Making in the North” at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association, April 2004, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.
2002a John Ziker and Patty Gray, “Soviet Nostalgia and Post-Soviet Enterprise in the Russian North.” Paper presented in the panel “Property Relations in an Era of Global Change” at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 2002, New Orleans, LA.
2002b “The Obshchina Movement in Chukotka: Dreams and Realities.” Paper presented in the panel “Peoples and the Environment in Siberia and the Russian Far East” at the 9th British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar (BUSSS), Sept. 2002, Leeds, England.
2001 “From ‘Movement Society’ to Post-Soviet Social Movements: Anthropology of Activism in the Russian Far East.” Paper presented in the panel “Towards an Anthropology of Social Movements” at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 2001, Washington, D.C.
2000 “ ‘Gift Pro Quo’: The Social Life of Information in the Russian Far East.” Paper presented in the panel “Property and the Gift” at the 99th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 2000, San Francisco, CA.

 

Teaching

2008 Lecturer in Anthropology, National University of Ireland at Maynooth
2007 Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks
2003-07 Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks
2000-02 Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Research, Halle, Germany, in the Property Relations Group directed by Chris Hann; 2001-02 Coordinator of the Siberia Project Group of this institute.
1999 Adjunct Instructor of Anthropology, Central Missouri State University
 

2008- National University of Ireland Maynooth, Dept. of Anthropology:
Undergraduate Courses:
AN227 Anthropological Research and Writing
ES 320 Constructing and Contesting European identities
· Postgraduate Courses:
AN 616 Topics in Anthropology and Development: Gender
AN 626 Development and The Gift

2003-07 University of Alaska Fairbanks, Department of Anthropology:
Undergraduate Courses:
ANTH 100X Individual, Society and Culture
ANTH 215 Fundamentals of Social/Cultural Anthropology
· Stacked Undergraduate/Graduate Courses:
ANTH 409/609 Anthropology of Religion
ANTH 445/645 Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective
ANTH 446/646 Economic Anthropology
· Graduate Courses:
ANTH 629 Structures of Anthropological Argument
ANTH 630 Anthropological Field Methods
ANTH 692 Russian for Research Purposes
 

Professional Service

2006 Secretary of Soyuz, The Post-Communist Cultural Studies Interest Group, elected to 2-year term
2004 Associate Editor and joint owner of the journal Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies, published by Berghahn
 

Professional Membership

Anthropological Association of Ireland 
American Anthropological Association 
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies 
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology 
Society for the Anthropology of Religion 
International Arctic Social Sciences Association 
Society for Economic Anthropology 
Soyuz, The Post-Communist Cultural Studies Interest Group
 

Ethnographic Field Research

·Current project (2006-09): “Missionaries, Humanitarian Aid, and Accompanying Ideologies: The Economic Impact of Missionary Activity in the Russian Far East.” Field research conducted in Magadan, Russia and at selected locations in Alaska. Funded by U.S. National Science Foundation in the context of the collaborative international project “New Religious Movements in the Russian North: Competing Uses of Religiosity After Socialism” (NEWREL), which is part of the European Science Foundation EUROCORES Programme titled “BOREAS – Histories from the North: Environments, Movements, Narratives”. Patty Gray is Project Leader of the NEWREL project (http://www.newrel.org)
·001 Republic of Marii El, Russia, funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, two weeks of comparative research to investigate the experiences of smallholder private farmers.
2001 Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, three months in Anadyr’ and Bilibino to investigate the development of rodovye obshchiny (ancestral communities) of indigenous people.
2000 Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, three months in Anadyr’, Bilibino, and the obshchina “Kaiettyn” to investigate changing property relations in reindeer herding communities.
1998 Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, funded by the National Science Foundation, four months in Anadyr’ and the village of Snezhnoe to investigate the impact of state farm reorganization on rural residents, especially reindeer herders.
1995-96 Russia, funded by Fulbright-Hayes and IREX, fourteen months (five months in St. Petersburg / Moscow, seven months in Anadyr’, two months in the village of Snezhnoe, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug) to investigate the rise of indigenous activism in Chukotka
 

Contact Details

Contact Dr. Patty A. Gray