Nadezhda (Nadia) Mamontova PhD

Nadezhda (Nadia) Mamontova

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Newton International Fellow

Contact details

Dr Nadezhda Mamontova is a human geographer and social anthropologist specialising in Siberian and Arctic Studies and indigenous people.

Qualifications

MA (with honours) Social Anthropology – Russian State University for the Humanities

MA (with honours) in Altaic Studies – University of Helsinki

Kandidatskaya (equivalent to a PhD) History – Institute for Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences

PhD Geography and the Environment – Oxford University

Biography

Dr Nadia Mamontova is currently a Newton International Fellow. Before coming to the UK she was a collegium researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, Finland, and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow with the Geography Program at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. In 2020, she completed a PhD at the University of Oxford in the School of Geography and the Environment. Before that she earned a PhD in History (Social Anthropology) from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences. She has two Master's degrees with honours in Social Anthropology and Altaic Studies from the Russian State University for the Humanities (2009) and the University of Helsinki (2015). Since 2007, she carried out fourteen field expeditions among the Evenki and other Indigenous communities in the Russian North.

Research

Indigenous people of Siberia and the Arctic, indigenous cartography, geological anthropology, space and place studies, indigenous place names, critical toponymy, community-based and collaborative methods in social sciences, indigenous geoontologies

Other activities

Dr Mamontova has long been involved in research with indigenous communities of the North. Her research projects have focused on indigenous language documentation, place names, and vernacular cartography. She recently published a book of indigenous Evenki narratives in the Evenki language as an effort to maintain this endangered Siberian language. As a social anthropologist, Dr Mamontova has served as an invited specialist on indigenous matters for the European Council, Russian Ministry for Regional Development, and Exxon Neftegas Company. In 2018 – 2019, she was part of the organizing committee of the UK Polar Network, where she worked to promote collaboration between UK and Russian Early Career Researchers doing research in the Arctic. Currently, Mamontova is the Principal Investigator for the project ‘GIS-based community-oriented Indigenous Evenki toponymic platform’, supported by the Research Strategic Initiatives Grant (RSIG), Canada.

Publications

Articles

Mamontova, N. (2023). The Nuclear Anthropocene of the Soviet north: Cold War vernacular collecting and mining uranium, and its legacies. Journal of Historical Geography82, 38-48.

Mamontova, N., & Thornton, T. F. (2022). The multiperspectival nature of place names: Ewenki mobility, river naming, and relationships with animals, spirits, and landscapes. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute28(3), 875-895.

Mamontova, N., & Klyachko, E. (2022). ‘Process Toponymy’: A GIS-Based Community-Engaged Approach to Indigenous Dynamic Place Naming Systems and Vernacular Cartography. Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization57(3), 213-225.

Mamontova, N. (2021). “The ice has gone”: Vernacular meteorology, fisheries and human–ice relationships on Sakhalin Island. Polar Record57.

Mamontova, N., Klyachko, E., & Thornton, T. F. (2018). ‘The track is never the same’ The fluidity of geographic terminology and conceptualisation of space among Ewenki. Hunter Gatherer Research4(3), 311-337.

Book chapters

Mamontova, N. (2023). Sociolinguistic Aspects of Tungusic. In The Tungusic Languages, ed. by A. Vovin, J. A/ Alonso de la Fuente, J. Janhunen (pp. 501-516). London: Routledge.

Mamontova, N., Thornton, T. F., & Klyachko, E. (2023). The phenomenology of riverine names and hydrological maps among Siberian Evenki. In The Siberian World, ed. by J. Ziker, J. Ferguson, V. Davydov (pp. 79-95). London: Routledge.

Mamontova, N. (2022). Naming the Arctic and Siberia: The Role of Cartographic Agencies in the Soviet Toponymic Policy and Practice. In Encountering Toponymic Geopolitics, ed. by S. Basik (pp. 120-136). London: Routledge.