My Research


Here I am with Marusa and Olga, two of my main consultants in the tiny hamlet of Tumul, Suntar Region, Sakha Republic

My geographic area of research has been in Russia within the context of the circumpolar countries since 1988 and in the United States since 2004. I practice qualitative and quantitative research methods that bring to light the cultural contexts and intricacies of “the local.” I uphold that one of the most vital ways to understand global issues is by focusing on the local, specifically on the ways in which individuals, households, communities, and regional groups orient themselves to their environment and their world. With such an intimate understanding of the local, knowledge can be tested for its generalizability in other similar and not so similar contexts.

I began research in Russia in 1988 because of my fascination with the people and the ecosystems of Siberia, especially in the Lake Baikal area. From 1988 to 1991 I conducted ethnographic and environmental research in southern Siberia including Tuva, Buryatia, and Mongolia and in parts of western Russia, Ukraine, and Kalmykia. Click HERE for background of research in russia.

Since 1991 I have focused my research and work with the Viliui Sakha, native Sakha of the Viliui River Regions of western Sakha Republic, northeastern Siberia, Russia. For my Master’s research I analyzed the contemporary form of the Sakhas’ annual summer yhyakh festival. Click HERE for masters research.

During my research I decided I needed to learn the Sakha language for two reasons: 1) most of the older inhabitants I was interviewing did not know the Russian language; and 2) because, more often than not, my translators could not tell me in Russian what was being said in Sakha. I returned the following fall with a language grant to learn Sakha. During that time I learned about the dire environmental issues of the Viliui regions and wrote a proposal to begin a community-based environmental education center in the local village nature museum to act as a watershed wide clearinghouse for citizen information. I worked on that project for two years then developed a new project to involve local citizens in the mid-90s decision by the state government to open new diamond mines adjacent to native villages. In 1997 I entered the doctoral program at UNC-CH to study Viliui Sakhas’ use of their environment, their unique adaptation of horse and cattle husbandry to an extreme subarctic climate, the environmental impacts of extractive diamond mining on the Viliui environment and the Sakhas’ daily survival, and the local, regional, and state policies that determine local resource management and environmental protection. Click HERE for more on my doctoral research. From May 2003-May 2006 I was Principal Investigator for an NSF-funded sustainable communities project in four Viliui Sakha villages. Click HERE for more on this project. I am presently working on a new project that investigates local knowledge and resilience in Viliui Sakha communities pertaining to the regional effects of global climate change. You can go HERE for more on this project. Over the course of my near two-decade engagement with Siberia, I have traveled there sixteen times for a total stay of seventy one months (6 years). I am fluent in both the Russian and the Sakha languages.

Here I am during a winter period of research in the Sakha Republic of northeastern Siberia.

As my research has progressed I have become increasingly certain about the resilience of local communities, in my research case, the resilient adaptations of Viliui Sakha in the face of major environmental, geopolitical, and socio-cultural challenges. Research about marginalized peoples like the Viliui Sakha is important on a broader level for several reasons. First, there is relatively little knowledge in the West about Viliui Sakha in historical or contemporary context. Secondly, understanding how non-Russian native peoples have and continue to adapt in the post-Soviet context is key to realizing a sustainable global community. And lastly, rural Sakha sustainability is intricately tied to the global diamond economy and so continued research provides invaluable insight about how such macro-economic forces can influence local communities. I am also involved in several international working groups that focus on sustainability in the arctic. Click HERE to go to my working groups page.

Concurrently I am developing a domestic research agenda to work with marginalized rural communities in the U.S. in the face of environmental change, specifically the uncertainties and challenges of global climate change.

Since coming to George Mason, I have served as co-PI for a 3-year $130,000 project funded by a Chesapeake Watershed Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit/ National Park Service grant, “Development of a spatially explicit participatory model to explore anthropogenic on-site threats on rare aquatic resources of the Potomac Gorge." This research is a partnership between ESP faculty and graduate students (Dawn Parker, Susan Crate, R. Chris Jones, and Robin Brake), the National Park Service Center for Urban Ecology, and the Potomac Gorge National Park. Our objective is to explore the effects of off-site land uses on water quality in the Potomac Gorge National Park, using agent-based modeling to incorporate landowner practices to determine effective educational and policy efforts. We are examining interactions between three key drivers: physical site characteristics such as soils, slope, elevation, and location in a watershed; the type of land-use development, such as high density vs. low density residential; and characteristics of local landowners, such as income, mobility, and valuation of community and local natural environments. My focus is the latter-- understanding the human dimensions of environmental change—how local actors perceive their environment and choose to act sustainably or not. I oversee survey development, implementation and analysis.

My research interests and activities also translate into much of my service work organizing colloquia and conferences, guest lecturing, and working on campus greening projects Click HERE to link to my service page and HERE to link to my greening page.