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Bio

I am a historian and anthropologist specializing in the Arctic and Siberia, with a focus on the history of knowledge—particularly the intersections between Indigenous and academic ways of knowing. In exploring these intersections, I seek to untangle their connections across national borders and examine how they contribute to broader transnational intellectual currents. 

I am currently working on my second book project, which explores the environmental and Indigenous history of Novaya Zemlya, a remote group of islands in the Russian Arctic. The area is best known as a major Soviet nuclear testing site, including the detonation of the Tsar Bomba—the largest nuclear device ever exploded. This history provides a powerful way to understand how military activity, the natural environment, and Indigenous life have intersected in the far North.

In addition, I am writing on the anti-colonial Indigenous religious movement in South Siberia known as Burkhanism or Ak-Jaŋ; the transnational history of the concept of ethnicity (etnos), explored through the life and work of two of its originators, Sergei and Elizabeth Shirokogoroff; the intellectual and political histories of anthropological archives and archiving; and Siberian and Arctic Indigenous writing practices and literatures. My academic publications have been covered by a range of outlets, from Siberian Indigenous newspapers such as Nyar”yana Vynder [Nenets: The Red Tundra Man], to The Lantern, to Museum Journal, to The Atlantic.

My research has been supported by American and European grants from the Center for Northeast Asian Studies at Tohoku University (Japan), the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at The Ohio State University (US), the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the European Research Council, The Leverhulme Trust (UK), the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University (US), the Research Council of Norway, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), the Modern Endangered Archives Program (Arcadia Fund, US), the Wenner-Gren Foundation (US), among others.

As part of my community-oriented projects, I located, digitized, and collaboratively edited—together with Nenets artists and knowledge holders—one of the earliest ethnographic film reels, created by an ethnographic couple among the Nenets in 1929–1930. This film, titled Samoyedic Diary (in Russian and Nenets), is now available on YouTube.

Another collaborative project, titled Voices of Pre-Industrial Siberia, was carried out together with Evenki, Nenets, and Sakha scholars and artists from Siberia, as well as audio archivists in Saint Petersburg, with the aim of digitizing, contextualizing, and sharing a collection of tape recordings of Indigenous peoples of the North. This large and unique collection of Indigenous voices, dating from the 1920s to the 1980s, had never previously been professionally digitized and is now available online.

I greatly enjoy teaching and collaborating with students on a broad range of topics related to Slavic, Russian, and Eurasian cultural histories and literatures whether closely aligned with my own interests or offering opportunities to explore new intellectual terrains together.

Monographs

[in its final stages]: Arzyutov, Dmitry V. The Northern Book of Origins: Siberian Indigenous Narratives and Metropolitan Ethnogenesis Theories. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. [Series: Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology Series]

Edited collections

[in progress]: Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Laura Siragusa, and Sarah C. Mortiz, eds. Of Those Who Know the Way: Indigenous and Local Companions and the Co-Production of Knowledge in the Circumpolar North.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei A. Kan, Laura Siragusa, and Aleksander Pershai, eds. 2026. Paper Bridges Between Franz Boas and Russian Anthropology. In two volumes. University of Nebraska Press and Amercian Philosophical Society (with Epilogue by Igor Krupnik). [Series: The Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition] [publisher’s website]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Igor Krupnik, and Veronika Trotter, guest eds. 2026. “De-Centering Siberian Museum Anthropology: Transnational Histories of Indigenous Collections” Museum Anthropology. Virtual special issue

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Laura Siragusa, guest eds. 2024. “Ėpistoliarnye sviazi s polem i proizvodstvo antropologicheskogo znaniia” [= Letters from/to the Field and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. No. 190(6) [available online] [in Russian]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Laura Siragusa, guest eds. 2024. “Ėpistoliarnye sviazi issledovateleĭ i proizvodstvo antropologicheskogo znaniia” [= Letters Between Researchers and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. No. 189(5) [available online] [in Russian]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Karina Lukin, guest eds. 2023. “Entangled Indigenous Historicities from the Eurasian North.” Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. 47(3) [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., David G. Anderson, and Svetlana V. Podrezova, eds. 2022. Puteshestviia cherez sibirskuiu step’ i taĭgu k antropologicheskim kontseptsiiam: ėtnoistoriia Sergeia i Elizavety Shirokogorovykh [= Journeys through the Siberian Steppes and Taiga to Anthropological Concepts: The Ethno-history of Sergei and Elizabeth Shirokogoroff]. In three volumes. Moscow: Indrik. [available online]

Anderson, David G., Dmitry V. Arzyutov, and Sergei S. Alymov, eds. 2019. Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. (with Epilogue by Nathaniel Knight) [available online]

Davydov, Vladimir N. and Dmitry V. Arzyutov, guest eds. 2018. Special issue after the 10th International Siberian Studies Conference Passion for Life: Emotions, Feelings, and Perception in the North and Siberia, Saint-Petersburg, Russia (October 2016). Kunstkamera, no. 2. [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., and Marina D. Liubliskaia, eds. 2018. Nenetskoe olenevodstvo: geografiia, ėtnografiia, lingvistika [= Nenets Reindeer Husbandry: Geography, Ethnography, and Linguistics]. St. Petersburg: MAE RAN [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., guest ed. 2017. “Beyond the Anthropological Texts: History and Theory of Fieldworking in the North”. Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies. 16(1) [journal’s website]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Nikolai B. Vakhtin, guest eds. 2016. Special issue dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Vladimir G. Bogoraz (1865-1936). Antropologicheskiĭ forum, no. 29. [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei S. Alymov, and David G. Anderson, eds. 2014. Ot klassikov k marksizmu: soveshchanie ėtnografov Moskvy i Leningrada (5–11 aprelia 1929 g.) [= From Classics to Marxism: The Meeting of Ethnographers from Moscow and Leningrad (5-11 April 1929)]. Vol. VII. Kunstkamera — Archives. St. Petersburg: MAE RAN [available online]

Davydov, Vladimir N., and Dmitry V. Arzyutov, eds. 2014. Grani sotsial'nogo: antropologicheskie perspektivy issledovaniia sotsial'nykh otnosheniĭ i kul'tury. [= Dimensions of Social Life: Anthropological Perspectives on Social Relations and Culture]. Vol. 4. Sibirskii sbornik. St. Petersburg: MAE RAN. [available online]

Selected peer review articles and books chapters

In press. Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Veronika Trotter, and Vera Solovyeva,. “Spinning the Past Forward: Recording, Archiving, and (Re-)Listening to Siberian Phonograph Cylinders from the Jesup North Pacific Expedition” Museum Anthropology.

In press. Arzyutov, Dmitry V. “Missionaries as ‘Ethnographers,’ Ethnographers as ‘Missionaries’: Indigenous Religious Resistance and the Politics of Knowledge in Siberian Altai.” Slavic Review

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2026. “Felting Indigenous Sovereignty: The Political Ecology of Ritual Rugs in Siberian Altai.” In Indigenous Heritage in Siberia: The Power of Objects, edited by Nadezhda Mamontova and Dmitriy Oparin, 185-202. London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2025. “More Than a Shaman: The Life History of An Altai Shepherd Surrounded by Sacred Mountains, Siberian Ethnographers, and Anthropological Ideas.” In Anthropology of Siberia in the Making: Openings and Closures from the 1840s to the Present, edited by Virginie Vaté and Joachim Otto Habeck. Vol. 50. Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia. Berlin, Münster: LIT Verlag.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Laura Siragusa. 2025. “Writing Without Letters: Inscriptive Practices in Trans-Indigenous Arctic Literacy History.” Slavic and East European Journal. 69(4): 475–93.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and David G. Anderson. 2024. “Proxies and Partial Connections in an Anthropologist’s Archive.” The British Journal for the History of Science 57(3): 389-405.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087424000815

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2024. “The Making of the Homo Polaris: Human Acclimatization to the Arctic Environment and Soviet Ideologies in Northern Medical Institutions.” Settler Colonial Studies 14 (2): 180–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2023.2274673.

Losey, Robert J., Tatiana Nomokonova, Dmitry V. Arzyutov, Andrei V. Gusev, Andrei V. Plekhanov, Natalia V. Fedorova, and David G. Anderson. 2021. “Domestication as Enskilment: Harnessing Reindeer in Arctic Siberia.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 28 (1): 197–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09455-w.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2019. “Environmental Encounters: Woolly Mammoth, Indigenous Communities and Metropolitan Scientists in the Soviet Arctic.” Polar Record 55 (3): 142–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247419000299.

Anderson, David G., and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2019. “The Etnos Archipelago: Sergei M. Shirokogoroff and the Life History of a Controversial Anthropological Concept.” Current Anthropology 60 (6): 741–73. https://doi.org/10.1086/704685.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2018. “Voices of the Land, Samizdat, and Visionary Politics: On the Social Life of Altai Narratives.” Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia 57 (1): 38–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/10611959.2018.1470426.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Khadri Okotetto. 2018. “Sviazyvaia veshchi, zhivotnykh i liudeĭ: k sotsial’noĭ topologii nenetskikh uzlov [= Tying Things, Animals, and Human Beings Together: Towards a Social Topology of Nenets Knots].” Arkheologiia Arktiki, edited by Natalia V. Fedorova. 5:89-106. Salekhard. [in Russian]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., and Sergei A. Kan. 2017. “The Concept of the ‘Field’ in Early Soviet Ethnography: A Northern Perspective.” Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies. 16 (1): 31–74. https://doi.org/10.3167/sib.2017.160103.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2016. “Samoyedic Diary: Early Years of Visual Anthropology in the Soviet Arctic.” Visual Anthropology. 2016. 29(4-5): 331-359 https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2016.1191927

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2016. “Shatra and Jurt: The ‘Return Address’ in Rituals of Altaians.” Archaeology, Anthropology and Ethnology of Eurasia 44 (3): 111–20. https://doi.org/10.17746/1563-0110.2016.44.3.111-120.

Anderson, David G., and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2016. “The Construction of the Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia.”” History and Anthropology. 2016. 27(2): 183-209. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1140159

Kan, Sergei, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2016. “The Saga of The L.H. Morgan Archive, or How an American Marxist Helped Make a Bourgeois Anthropologist the Cornerstone of Soviet Ethnography.” Edited by Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach. Local Knowledge, Global Stage, Histories of Anthropology Annual, 10: 149–220. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1dxg7dv.10.

Awards, fellowships, and grants (last five years)

2027: Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Japan.

2026: Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University.

2024-2025: ASC Departmental Student Research Program Grants, the Ohio State University. Project title: The Right to Write: Documenting Minoritized Literatures and Cultures in Russia. (with Dr Philip Tuxbury-Gleissner)

2024: Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at the Ohio State University (East European and Eurasian Online Curricular Module Development Program). Project title: Tales from Home: Two Siberians on Siberia’s History, Culture, and the Environment (with Michelle Verbitskaya)

2023-2025: The Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) / UCLA Library granting program funded by Arcadia Fund (US). Project title: Siberian Voices. Voices of Pre-Industrial Siberia: The Collections of the Pushkin House (MEAP-3-0065) (with Dr. David Anderson, Aberdeen U, Scotland)

2020: The 2019 Ab Imperio Award for the best peer-reviewed article in new imperial history and history of diversity in Northern Eurasia, up to the late twentieth century. For the article “The Etnos Archipelago: Sergei M. Shirokogoroff and the Life History of a Controversial Anthropological Concept.” [Anderson and Arzyutov 2019].