| Postdoctoral Research Fellow | |
| Home institution: | Georgetown University, Washington D.C. |
| Time at IEG: | 2026, 2027 |
| Funding: | IEG Fellowship |
| Research topic: | Crafting Knowledge at the Margins: Revolutionary Exiles, Indigenous Siberians, and Colonial Encounters in Russia’s Northeast Asia, 1870s-1930s |
| "Anna Smelova received her PhD in 2025 with a dissertation on the role of Russian exiled ethnographers in the “conceptual conquest” of Siberia during the late imperial and early Soviet periods. Her current book project examines how former Populist (Narodnik) exiles contributed to the scientific exploration and colonization of Siberia, highlighting the process of knowledge production outside the imperial metropolis. Focusing on collaborations between political exiles and Indigenous Siberian intellectuals, it explores how these encounters shaped ethnographic knowledge and influenced late imperial and early Soviet nationalities policy. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History, she is revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, expanding its scope to trace scholarly networks across Beringia. The project also explores international collaborations, which included exiled ethnographers such as Waldemar Bogoras, Waldemar Jochelson, and Lev Shternberg. It investigates how ethnographic knowledge emerged from these complex dynamics." |
(c) Anna Smelova
