For fifty years the Scott Polar Research Institute has been a major centre in the west for the study of Siberia and the Russian North. Building on Terence Armstrong’s earlier work, the Group continues to be a pioneer of western fieldwork in remote areas of this region and has a network of local associates and contacts on the ground which is without parallel in the western world. We collaborate with many local organisations and currently run a number of long-term projects in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and in the Sakhalin, Taimyr, Komi, Baikal, Kola, Nenets, Magadan and Chukotka areas. Members of the Group also work widely throughout northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Scandinavia, giving us an exceptional circumpolarperspective among social science institutions.
Members of the Institute’s Anthropology, Russian and Northern Studies Group have made award winning documentary-films for television and the group’s work is supported by exceptional library holdings which include the most comprehensive collection of material on Siberia and the Russian Arctic outside Russia itself. The Institute also works closely with local communities, governments and non-governmental organisations in the fields of natural resource management and social development.
The Scott Polar Research Institute is active across the entire range of social science disciplines, with a particularly strong interest in social anthropology, comparative religion, political science, economic development, resource management, transport and communications and business development. Doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, visiting scholars and associated consultants carry out long-term fieldwork in every region of the Arctic and work through local languages, often advising government bodies, non-governmental organisations and private companies worldwide.
Current research topics include global environmental change, resource management, mineral economies, fisheries economics, timber, shipping, aviation, telecommunications, regional economy and business development, transport, traditional shamanic religions, religious and cultural revivalism, cross-cultural psychiatric services, gender relations, demographic changes, environmentalist movements, social problems of hunters and pastoralists, ethnic and regional movements, and models of equitable social development.