Department of Anthropology

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Research Professor in CERES and the Department of Anthropology, has research interests in social theory, inter-ethnic relations, religion, the dynamics of nationalism, and the anthropology of the Russian Federation. She has done extensive fieldwork, focusing on Siberia and Central Asia, regularly traveling to the Far East (Sakha Republic), and working collaboratively with indigenous scholars in the U.S. and Siberia. A current research project compares political and cultural revitalization in three republics within the Russian Federation, Sakha (Yakutia), Buryatia, and Tuva. She has taught at the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania, and held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard, Columbia, and the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center. As editor of the journal Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia, she helps scholars from the former Soviet Union be published in English. She is especially proud to have helped organize exchanges between Native Siberian and Native American leaders.