Geographical areas of specialization
- Russia; Siberia; Mongolia
My research on language and media in post-socialist Eurasia lies at the intersection of two clusters of problems.
I am especially interested in the centrality of affect and emotion in language shift and revitalization, and in how affective senses of belonging are (or are not) enabled by mass-mediated interactions. Methodologically, I have a keen interest in advancing the ethnography of media, especially the ethnography of journalism, to bridge the traditional production/consumption divide.
This research is the basis for my current book project, tentatively entitled Mixed Messages: Language, Media, and Belonging in Asian Russia.
The second, related cluster of problems includes materiality, technology, circulation, and notions of property. I am particularly interested in how intellectual and creative property are figured within socialist and post-socialist contexts, which I am developing into a new long-term ethnographic project on the Mongolian cashmere industry. This project explores the production and global circulation of Mongolian cashmere to determine how different forms of value—economic, social, linguistic, moral—accrue to material goods and subsequently transform society and culture through their transnational movement.
I am a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist with special interests in language and media in post-Soviet Eurasia.
Research Interests
- Media, materiality, semiotics, multilingualism, language shift and endangerment, language and political economy, historical anthropology, cultural and intellectual property, ethnography of institutions, socialism and post-socialism, race and ethnicity; Mongolia and Russia, especially Siberia.
