Project Members

Project leader
Sven-Roald Nystø, Árran Lule Sami Centre, Drag.

Scientific Leader
Professor Piers Vitebsky, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge; UiT the Arctic University of Tromsø; and North-Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk.

Research Coordinator
Dr Emma Wilson, ECW Energy Ltd, London and Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.

RESEARCHERS

• Ragnhild Freng Dale, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge (Partial participation).
• Dr Aytalina Ivanova, North-Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk and UiT the Arctic University of Tromsø
  (Partial participation).
• Dr Natalia Novikova, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
• Research Professor Indra Overland, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and Nord University (Norway).
• Alesia Prachakova, Mintz Group, London
  (Partial participation).
• Áike Niillas Peder Selfors, UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
• Dr Roman Sidortsov, Michigan Technological University and Vermont Law School.
• Research Professor Florian Stammler, University of Lapland and Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.
• Professor Mattias Åhren, Faculty of Law, UiT The Arctic University of Norway (until 30 September 2015).

Biographical data on project members

Sven-Roald Nystø is a Lule Sami from Oarjjevuodna / Hellmofjorden in Divtasvuodna / Tysfjord, Nordland. He was the President of the Sami Parliament in Norway for two terms between
1997 to 2005, representing the Norwegian Sami Association. He was a member of the Government’s Expert Commission on High North Affairs 2007-2009, has 13 years of experience from the Sami Rights Commission, chaired the Norwegian Sami Association and the Working Group of Indigenous Peoples in the Barents-Euro Arctic Region and
has more than 30 years of voluntary engagement with various Sami NGOs. He is currently working
as Special Adviser at the Árran Lule Sami Centre, and is the Chair of the Board at the Centre for Sami Studies, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He received his master’s degree from the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, where he studied the political background to Greenland’s independence movement.

Professor Piers Vitebsky is Emeritus Head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge; Professor, University of Tromsø the Arctic University of Norway; and Honorary Professor, North-Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk. For thirty years he ran
a research programme in Cambridge that trained a generation of specialists in the Russian North, and he now trains indigenous social science researchers in Russia and Norway. He specialises in indigenous peoples of Eurasia and his books include Reindeer people: living with animals and spirits in Siberia; Dialogues with the dead: the discussion of mortality among the Sora of eastern India; and Living without the dead: loss and redemption in a jungle cosmos.

Dr Emma Wilson is an independent researcher and consultant, director of ECW Energy Ltd, and Associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. She has 20 years’ experience in energy and extractive industries, community relations and corporate responsibility, including social impact assessment and anthropological field research. She speaks fluent Russian and has worked in Russia and Central Asia, as well as Norway, Greenland, Nigeria and South Africa. 

Ragnhild Freng Dale is a PhD Candidate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. She is also associated with the project Energethics at the University of Bergen, Department of Social Anthropology. Her research is centred on conflict and consent around extractive industries in Sápmi and Northern Norway.

Dr Aytalina Ivanova is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Northeastern Federal University, Yakutsk, Russia and a post-doc in a NRC NORUSS project at UiT the Arctic University of Tromsø. Following her PhD in Historical Legal Studies, she has become an expert in environmental, minority and land legislation in Russia. For the last decade, Ivanova’s research has focused particularly on the legal aspects of the advance of extractive industries to ever more remote areas of Russia, where industry usually encounters the traditional livelihoods of indigenous peoples. Her fieldwork areas include Yakutia, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and Kamchatka.

Dr Natal’ya Novikova is a leading researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences. She has carried out field research among Khanty, Mansy, Nenets, Nivkhi, Oroki, Eskimo (Russia), Inuvialuit (Canada) and Sami (Norway). She is the author of more than 150 academic publications on the ethnology and legal anthropology of indigenous peoples of the North, and on interrelations between indigenous peoples and industry in the context of international, national, and customary law. She works as an executive director of Etnoconsulting LLC., an organisation providing consulting services, expert assessments, and other applied services connected with ethnocultural and ethnoconfessional relations.

Research Professor Indra Overland is Head of the Energy Programme at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). He is also Professor II
at Nord University (Norway) and spokesperson for prixindex.net. He did his PhD at the Scott Polar Research Institute in the University of Cambridge and has since worked extensively on the post-Soviet energy sector, including oil, gas and renewables. He is the co-author of Bridging Divides: Ethno-Political Leadership among the Russian Sámi.

Alesia Prachakova is a Research Assistant in the Russia, Eurasia and Arctic research group and an Investigator at the Mintz Group’s office in London. Alesia has contributed to several research projects, centred respectively on relations between OPEC and Russia, the resource curse and authoritarianism, the trade and politics of natural resources and political risk in the global petroleum sector. Her main research interests lie in the field of energy sustainability, particularly the corporate social responsibility in the global petroleum industry, and she wrote her MPhil dissertation at the University of Cambridge on Sustainable Development in the Arctic: Petroleum Industry in the Norwegian and Russian High North.
At the Mintz Group, Alesia undertook a number of investigations related to corporate due diligence and allegations of negligence, corruption and fraud at international organisations, investment banks, law firms and corporations.

Áike Selfors is studying for a Masters of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies at the Centre for Sami Studies (Sesam), UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His thesis is a comparative political analysis of the consultations between the Norwegian authorities and the Sámi Parliament. The thesis analyses the democratic quality of and power in consultation. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, especially focusing on political science. The first year of his Masters focused on indigenous peoples and international human rights, especially with regard to Sami peoples’ rights and how the Norwegian state relates to these rights.

Dr Roman Sidortsov, J.D. LL.M currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Energy Policy at Michigan Technological University and as a non-resident Senior Global Energy Fellow at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. His research focuses on legal and policy issues related to the development of sustainable energy systems, energy security and justice, comparative and international energy law and policy, energy geopolitics, risk governance, and Arctic oil and gas with a special emphasis on the Russian Federation, Norway and the United States. Dr Sidortsov also serves as an editorial board member for Energy Research and Social Science for which he recently edited a special issue regarding energy development in the Arctic.

Research Professor Florian Stammler is Research Professor of Arctic Anthropology
(http://arcticanthropology.org) and co-ordinator of the Anthropology Research Team at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Finland (fstammle@ ulapland.fi). He is also a Research Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute in the University of Cambridge, U.K. (fms36@cam.ac.uk). He has worked and published since 1998 on Russian indigenous peoples’ encounters with extractive industries. He co-ordinates the International Arctic Social Sciences Association’s working group on extractive industries (www.arcticcentre.org/eiwg), as well as the Uarctic Thematic Network on the same topic (http://www. uarctic.org/organization/thematic-networks/arctic-extractive-industries/). He is the author of Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market: Culture, Property and Globalisation at the End of the Land.