I am an anthropologist and historian specializing in the Circumpolar North 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. My work investigates how Indigenous histories of North Eurasia have been conceptualized and written; how ideas of Indigeneity and ethnicity were shaped and implemented within Soviet and post-Soviet identity politics; and how human–environment relations have been constructed by local communities through everyday practices, oral narratives, and representations in literature. 

For over two decades, my research has engaged deeply with Altaians of South Siberia and the Nenets communities of the Russian Arctic. I have conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in these areas, supported by extensive archival research in Russia, East Asia, Europe, and North America. 

I am currently completing my first book manuscript, “The Northern Book of Origin: Siberian Indigenous Narratives and Metropolitan Ethnogenesis Theories” (under contract with the University of Nebraska Press). This project traces how Russian and Soviet anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists developed theories of Indigenous origins (ethnogenesis) using oral histories and folklore narratives recorded from Siberian and Northern Indigenous communities. At a theoretical level, this book explores how local ideas were translated into academic concepts and follows the transnational movement of these concepts throughout the 20th century. 

My second book project, still in its early stages, investigates the environmental and Indigenous history of Novaya Zemlya, a remote archipelago in the Russian Arctic. Famously used by the Soviet Union for nuclear testing—including the detonation of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear device ever tested—this site offers a stark lens through which to examine the intersections of militarization, environment, and Indigenous presence in the far North. 

In addition, I am writing on the anti-colonial Indigenous religious movement in South Siberia; the history of the concept of ethnicity (etnos) in Russia, explored through the life and work of one of its originators, Sergei and Elizabeth Shirokogoroff; the intellectual and political histories of anthropological and sound archives and archiving; and Siberian Indigenous writing practices and literatures. 

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. 

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. 

Book 

[under contract]: 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] 

Selected edited collections 

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

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Naomi Caffee, guest eds. [in progress]. “Literary (Colonial) Encounters: Indigenous Authors in Dialogue with Russian Imperial and Soviet Discourses”. [special issue devoted to translations of works by Indigenous authors]. 

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei A. Kan, Laura Siragusa, and Aleksander Pershai, eds. 2026 [in press]. Paper Bridges Between Franz Boas and Russian Anthropology. In two volumes. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press (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. [in press]. “De-Centering Siberian Museum Anthropology: Transnational Histories of Indigenous Collections” Museum Anthropology 

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] 

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] 

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] 

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., 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] 

Selected peer review articles and books chapters (last ten years) 

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. [in progress] “Traces on the Tundra Skin: The Politics of Scale in Environmental Conservation in the Late Soviet Arctic.”  

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. [in progress]. “Missionaries as Ethnographers, Ethnographers as Missionaries: Writing Indigenous Resistance in Siberian Altai.” Slavic Review [part of the 2027 special issue on missionary ethnography] 

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei A. Kan, and Laura Siragusa. 2026 [in press]. “The Boas Bridges to Russia: Building Transnational Anthropologies with Letters.” In Paper Bridges Between Franz Boas and Russian Anthropology, edited by Dmitry V. Arzyutov, Sergei A. Kan, Laura Siragusa, and Alexander Pershai. The Franz Boas Papers. Vol. 3. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. 

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

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2026 [in press]. “Felting Indigenous Sovereignty: The Political Ecology of Ritual Rugs in Siberian Altai” Indigenous Heritage in Siberia: The Power of Objects, edited by Nadezhda Mamontova and Dmitry Oparin. London and New York: Bloomsbury 

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2025. [in press]. “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 [in press]. “Writing Without Letters: Inscriptive Practices in Trans-Indigenous Arctic Literacy History.” Slavic and East European Journal. 69(4) 

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2025. “Rooting in the Subterranean: Underground Dwellers in Northern Indigenous Narratives and Metropolitan Anthropological Theories.” In Recovering Ancestors in Anthropological Traditions, edited by Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach, 15:1–42. Histories of Anthropology Annual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.31248634.5  

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., Sergei A. Kan, and Laura Siragusa. 2024. “Res Publica Literaria Frantsa Boasa, ili kak postroitʹ transnatsionalʹnuiu antropologiiu s pomoshchʹiu pisem [= Franz Boas’ Res Publica Literaria, or How to Build Transnational Anthropology with Letters].” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 189(5), 10–27. https://doi.org/10.53953/08696365_2024_189_5_10. [in Russian] 

Siragusa, Laura, and Dmitri Arzioutov. 2024. « Rien ne se perd : du développement durable dans les pratiques des communautés autochtones du Nord russe. » Slavica Occitania, no. 58 (April), 301–24. [journal’s website] [in French] 

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. 

Nomokonova, Tatiana, Robert J. Losey, Natalia V. Fedorova, Andrei V. Gusev, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2021. “Reindeer Imagery in the Making at Ust’-Polui in Arctic Siberia.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 31 (1): 161–81. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000414. 

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., and Lidia A. Danilina. 2020. “Ėtnografiia ėtnografa: Andreĭ Grigor’evich Danilin i ego arkhivy [= Ethnography of an Ethnographer: Andrei G. Danilin and His Archives].” Sibirskie istoricheskie issledovaniia, no. 4: 274–325. https://doi.org/10.17223/2312461X/30/14. [in Russian] 

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. 

Alymov, Sergei S., David G. Anderson, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2019. “Etnos-Thinking in the Long Twentieth Century.” In Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond, edited by David G. Anderson, Dmitry V. Arzyutov, and Sergei S. Alymov, 21–75. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0150.02. 

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2019. “Order Out of Chaos: Anthropology and Politics of Sergei M. Shirokogoroff.” In Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond, edited by David G. Anderson, Dmitry V. Arzyutov, and Sergei S. Alymov, 251–93. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0150.06. 

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. 

Alymov, Sergei S., David G. Anderson, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2018. “Life Histories of the Etnos Concept in Eurasia: An Introduction.” Ab Imperio 19 (1): 21–67. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2018.0002. 

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) 

2025 (postponed to 2026): Visiting Professorship at the Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Japan. 

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].