anthropology-staff

Florian has done research and lived in many regions of the Russian North since the mid 1990s, and has ever since enjoyed the particularities of how people contemporarily and historically organize their life in this vast area. Since the anthropology team’s big ORHELIA project, he has also started working comparatively with people living in the Western European Arctic, currently in South Greenland and Finnish Lapland. He has led several research projects working with Western and Russian Arctic societies and cultures. Much of his research and publications are on the encounter of (extractive) industries with animal-based livelihoods and how multiple land uses change the livelihoods of Arctic peoples, both indigenous and local. More recently, he has also worked on well-being, youth and Arctic urban anthropology. His research - often using a mix of participant observation and oral history as a method - contributes to broader theoretical debates on worldviews of extractivism, human-animal adaptability and well-being..

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tel. +358 400 138 807

Lukas has been working in the anthropology research team since 2013 and earned his PhD degree in 2020. Since 2022 he works in the project WIRE – Fluid Realities of the Wild. With a background in oral history and Russian studies, Lukas specialized at the Arctic Centre in indigenous and youth issues in the Russian Northwest. His main research interests are about the Soviet policies towards indigenous minorities and their consequences to this day. A further strand of research has been anthropological inquiry into young peoples’ aspirations and well-being in Arctic single-industry towns. Methods of oral history, participant observation, archival work and media analysis are equally represented in his work. In all of his research, Lukas puts an emphasis on long-term field commitment, including bringing back research results to the communities they stem from.

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tel. +358 40 484 4418 

Aytalina Ivanova has a degree in legal history from Yakutia, East Siberia, where she has been an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the North-Eastern Federal University since 2000. Since 2014 she specialises in Law and Anthropology, and is one of the few scholars who studies the “social life of law” in the Russian Arctic using the anthropological field method of participant observation. Over the past decade, Ivanova's research has focused in particular on the legal aspects of the advancement of extractive industries into increasingly remote areas where industry typically encounters the traditional livelihoods of indigenous peoples, and on Arctic animal husbandry law. In addition to Yakutia, she has done fieldwork also in the Nenets Autonomous District, Kamchatka, and Lapland.

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Francis Joy is a visiting post-doctoral researcher from the United Kingdom, currently working as a member of the Arctic Anthropology Research Team at the University of Lapland Arctic Centre. The focus for research has been an extensive study of Sámi religion, history, culture and traditions in different settings which includes beliefs, practices and cultural heritage. Furthermore, within the research field a study of sacred sites, prehistoric rock paintings in Finland and what appear as links between cosmological landscapes on sacred Sámi drums from the seventeenth century has been another topic of enquiry and subsequent investigation. Data and materials from these fields of enquiry have been presented in Siberia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Francis has also published three books of poetry and is currently engaged in a two-year funded research project in a study titled: Gifts from the Sentient Forest: Communication and Collaboration between Trees and People in Northen Finland.

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Nuccio got his PhD from the University of Manchester in Social Anthropology with a thesis on perception of landscape and concepts of space among Sami people in Northeastern Finland, where his regional specialization lies; in particular he has done fieldwork with Sámi reindeer herders in Sallivaara Reindeeer Association. The research focused on people’s relations with the landscape and on its influence in fashioning their sense of identity. More general issues of perception of the landscape, place and mobility play a prominent role in the research.

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tel. +358 40 484 4295

Anna has specialised in Arctic anthropology since 1995. Her research interests lie in polar communities studies, focusing on how different forms of knowledge become entangled in negotiations for legitimacy. She explores the ways communities across the Arctic and Sub-Antarctic (Patagonia; Argentina) embed themselves into the context of societal and environmental changes. Within this field, she investigates the ways of 'translating' theoretical paradigms (sustainability, resilience, circularity) applied in different economic sectors (reindeer herding, fisheries, cow breeding, tourism, and waste utilisation). In the anthropology of disaster (flooding, accidents on ice, invasive species), her research focuses on the different frameworks at play in perceiving and experiencing disastrous events and how ‘troubled’ property of a place is sensed through various forces and encounters between people and the environment. In her study on cold, she analyses multiple uses of cold as a physical conduit of economic realms and cultural and emotional states of being.

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tel. +358 400 882 065

Ria-Maria defended her PhD thesis on youth wellbeing in northern Finland at the University of Vienna’s Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Her research interests focus on Arctic youth wellbeing, transport and tourism infrastructures, shrinking northern towns and sustainable communities. She is currently funded by the ERC Advanced Grant project InfraNorth, conducting research spanning from Finnish Lapland to communities along the ‘Iron Ore Line’ in northern Sweden, extending to the ice-free port of Narvik in Norway. Previously she worked on the WOLLIE project addressing Arctic youth wellbeing issues and in the LISH project focusing on local initiatives and liveability in shrinking towns. 

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Stephan got his phD from the University of Leipzig with a thesis on public and private spheres among the West Siberian Khanty under the impact of large scale oil extraction. He has been working in the Russian North since the early 1990s and has also field experience in post Soviet Central Asia. His main interests are in the analysis of privacy and intimacy, the theory of hiding and exhibiting, taiga reindeer herding, and the impacts of extractive industries in the Russian North. He worked in the ORHELIA project on the relations between states and their northernmost residents with a focus on the European Nentsy.

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tel. +358 40 484 4079

Panu Itkonen, visiting senior researcher, got his PhD from the University of Helsinki in social and cultural anthropology with a thesis on cooperation and reciprocity in the Skolt Sami reindeer herding community in Northern Finland and the community’s relation to state administration. At the Arctic Centre University of Lapland, Panu has done research among the Skolt Sami, other local people, and representatives of administration. His research interests are directed to productive processes in the north and human relations, including relations to the environment. Recently, he has focused on sustainability issues. In addition to research-related activities, he has lectured and participated in student guidance at the University of Lapland.

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tel.  +358 40 484 4158

Teresa got her PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Oulu with a thesis on the coexistence of reindeer herding, extractive industries and nature-based tourism in northern Fennoscandia, with a focus on the anthropology of the good. She has done research mainly in the Finnish-Swedish border region. Her research interests currently revolve around the coexistence of competing livelihoods, northern human-environment relations and wellbeing.

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Karolina earned her PhD in law from the University of Lapland, focusing on informal socio-legal systems that shape cultural heritage among the Izhma Komi people of the Russian North. Her thesis explored village folklore and traditional nature use, including reindeer herding practices.
Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at Lund University, where she examines people’s lived experiences of justice in the green transition in the European North. Karolina has conducted long-term ethnographic research in two Arctic regions: Northwest Russia and, since 2025, Swedish Lapland. Her research interests lie within legal anthropology, especially realities of laws, normative informalities, and the changing cultures and livelihoods of Arctic communities.

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tel. +358 40 484 4269