Aleksandra Bekasova
Alexandra Bekasova is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE), St. Petersburg Campus, and Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History. She is a historian whose research focuses on mobility, travel, and transportation in the context of history of technology, environmental history, and the history of science. Among her recent publications are articles in The Extractive Industries and Society, and The British Journal for the History of Science. She contributed to the volumes A U-Turn to the Future: Sustainable Urban Mobility since 1850, and Russia in Motion: Cultures of Human Mobility since 1850. She also acted as a member of the editorial team for Place and Nature: Essays in Russian Environmental History (The White Horse Press, forthcoming), and also contributed to it as an author.
Eeva Berglund
Eeva Berglund has long explored issues around environmental politics and transformations in notions of expertise. She has a doctorate in social anthropology and an MSc in urban planning, both from the UK. She is currently Adjunct Professor of environmental policy, Department of Design at Aalto University, Finland. A publication worth mentioning is the 2019 volume, Dwelling in Political Landscapes: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives, which she co-edited with Anu Lounela and Timo Kallinen.
https://people.aalto.fi/eeva.berglund
Find out about Eeva’s CONTOURS project on Changing spatial imaginaries in Kainuu, northeast Finland
Jonathan Carruthers-Jones
Jonathan has worked on transdisciplinary approaches to the research and conservation of wilderness for over a decade. He was Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow as part of the Environmental Humanities for a Concerned Europe Innovative Training Network (ENHANCE ITN), at the University of Leeds, where he completed a multi-disciplinary PhD looking at how to improve decision-making on the protection of wild spaces and species within mountain areas in Europe. He held a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ‘Where are the wild things?’, Arctic Interactions Project, University of Oulu, Finland. Jonathan is currently Post-Doctoral Research Fellow on the Leeds University led Corridor Talk project: Conservation Humanities and the Future of Europe’s National Parks, a multidisciplinary research project looking at human wildlife conflicts in wilderness areas using spatial analysis combined with walking methods, and ecoacoustics. He is a member of the IUCN-WCPA Mountains Biome Network and a member of the wilderness working group of French IUCN ‘Wilderness et nature férale’ where he recently led work on the first wilderness map of France.
Carlo Cubero
Carlo is training the team in thecollection of audio-visual material and will oversee how the team presents its research results and directly engages local communities. Carlo holds a PhD in Social Anthropology using Visual Media from the University of Manchester, where he specialised in the contemporary Caribbean and Visual Anthropology. He is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tallinn University where he lectures and coordinates the Social Anthropology and Audiovisual Ethnography graduate programmes.
https://tallinn.academia.edu/CarloCubero
https://www.tlu.ee/en/anthropology
Find out about Carlo’s CONTOURS project on Multi-Modal Collaborations at Lahemaa National Park
Ekaterina Kalemeneva
Ekaterina Kalemeneva is a senior lecturer at the Department of History, and a researcher at the Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), St. Petersburg, Russia. Her research interests include the history of the Arctic urbanization, urban history, history of science, socialist architecture and environmental history. Her publications are devoted to the changes in urbanisation models of the Soviet Arctic and the role of architects and scientists in the formation of a new conception of the North in the Soviet Union.
https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/80036171#sci
Alexei Kraikovski
Alexei Kraikovski works on the history of multifaceted interaction between Russian society and the marine environment from 16th to 20th centuries. His research interests include the history of heritage in St. Petersburg, the White Sea area and the Russian Arctic. Having worked as a public history practitioner, he taught the practices and politics of heritage management. Alexei is active in the international collaborations and has been a visiting researcher and professor at universities and research centers in the Netherlands, Italy, France, and USA. The CONTOURS project is important for him as an arena for interdisciplinary collaboration.
Find out about Alexei’s CONTOURS project on Varzuga - the miracle of remoteness
Julia Lajus
Julia Lajus is a Head of Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History and Associate Professor at the Department of History, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2011-2015 she served as vice-president of the European Society of Environmental History. Her research focuses on history of field sciences such as fisheries science, oceanography and climatology; environmental history of biological resources, especially in marine and polar areas and studies of natural heritage. Her recent publications include chapters in the books: Competing Arctic Futures: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, and Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History.
Roger Norum
Roger is a University Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology and Docent in Geography at the University of Oulu, Finland. His research focuses on linkages between environment, infrastructure and mobility, primarily among transient communities in the Arctic and Asia.
Joonas Plaan
Joonas Plaan is a Lecturer in Anthropology at Tallinn University. He is currently completing his PhD dissertation on how climate change affects inshore fisheries in Newfoundland, Canada. Joonas has done fieldwork among fishing communities and climate activists. He also works at Estonian Fund for Nature as Sustainable Fisheries Expert.
https://www.tlu.ee/en/node/106497
Find out about Joonas’ CONTOURS project on Nature Tourism at the age of the Anthropocene
Lidia Rakhmanova
Lidia is a social anthropologist who explores seasonally isolated communities affected by the decay of infrastructures in the post-Soviet space. Her interests include informal nature management, fishing and hunting, local perceptions of climate change, memory politics and the clash of different types of knowledge (expert and local, scientific and embodied). Lidia is a senior lecturer at HSE St. Petersburg and a member of the Siberian Environmental Changes Network (SecNET). Before her current research, she worked as a cultural sociologist at the State Hermitage Museum.
During CONTOURS, Lidia will study coastal villages along the Ob river that remain largely invisible to cruise tourists who travel the Ob from Novosibirsk to Yamal. Her focus is on rethinking resources and the area's touristic, historical and environmental aesthetics from the point of view of local inhabitants. This takes into consideration the complex history of forced relocations in the 1930s and 1940s, the questioning of rootedness, and the new "wildness" of the settlements on the ruins of Soviet infrastructures.
Find out about Lidia’s CONTOURS project on New wilderness on the ruins of soviet infrastructures
Alessandro Rippa
Alessandro is a social anthropologist interested in the social and environmental impact of infrastructure development, the flow of commodities across national boundaries, and the role of informal markets in processes of globalization. As part of the CONTOURS consortium, he will explore issues of re-wilding, human-environment relations, and hunting practices in two Alpine valleys of Northern Italy. Alessandro is also the PI of the “Environing Infrastructure” project (www.environing.asia)
https://www.etis.ee/CV/Alessandro_Rippa/eng
Find out about Alessandro’s CONTOURS project on Hunting, re-wilding, and nature tourism in the Italian Alps
Helen Vaaks
Helen is currently enrolled in MA in audiovisual ethnography at the Tallinn University. She is taking ethnography and documentary filmmaking courses. Her research interests are human-environment interactions, conservation and preservation of environment, migration and integration, and education. She has a BSc in Biology from the University of Tartu where her research included studying the potential of enhancing and preserving the biodiversity in urban areas. Helen has volunteered in the European Solidarity Corps program in Lorient, France at Saint Louis high school where she conducted lessons and workshops for 15-18 y/o pupils on environmental issues. Moreover, she has participated in various training courses on environmentalism, social inclusion, diversity and creativity and is participating as a documentary filmmaker in PACE: Stories Untold project on migration.
Find out about Helen’s CONTOURS project on Endangered species, hardships and conservation
Anna-Maria Walter
Anna-Maria Walter has worked on the anthropology of emotions, gender relations and mobile phones in the high mountains of Gilgit, northern Pakistan. After completing her PhD at LMU Munich, she was a fellow at the University of Exeter and held a lectureship at LMU. Her monograph Intimate Connections will be published by Rutgers in Autumn, 2021. In her current research, Anna-Maria works on conceptions of the self through social media use, digital anthropology, perceptions of mountain landscapes in the Himalayas and the Alps, and the socio-ecological dimensions of Alpine ski touring.
www.ethnologie.uni-muenchen.de/personen/lehrbeauftragte/walter/index.html
Find out about Anna-Maria’s CONTOURS project on Ski mountaineering in the Bavarian Alps, Germany