Tatiana Vagramenko (PhD, MA)

Address: Study of Religions Department, Adjoining Campus, O’Rahilly Building, University College Cork , Ireland.

E-mail: tatiana.vagramenko@ucc.ie

Research and Teaching Interests

Anthropology of Christianity, religion and politics, ethnic and religious minorities in Russia and Ukraine, religious dissent and non-conformism in the Soviet period, post-socialism, the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine.

Arctic anthropology, indigenous people, new religious movements in Siberia, Evangelical missionary movements in post-Soviet Siberia and the Arctic, the Nenets indigenous people.

Current Position and Academic Affiliations

2017 – 2019	Study of Religions Department University College Cork, Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow
2014-Present	Marginalized and Endangered Worldviews Study Center (MEWSC) University College Cork, Ireland Affiliated Researcher
2016-Present	The Center of Arctic and Siberian Exploration Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Affiliated Researcher

Education

 

2014	PhD in Anthropology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
2007	MA in Ethnology (Cultural Anthropology), European University at St. Petersburg
2005	MA in Religious Studies, St. Petersburg State University
2001	BA in Religious Studies, St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy

 

Research Activities

2017 – 2019	Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship “Religious Minorities in Ukraine from the Soviet Underground to the Euromaidan: Pathways to Religious Freedom and Pluralism in Enlarging Europe” Principle Investigator
2016 – 2019	The European Union’s Horizon 2020 “Cultural Opposition – Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries”. Trinity College Dublin Member of expert network group, area of expertise – religious opposition in Soviet Ukraine
2010 – 2012	Templeton Foundation / University of Southern California: Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative Investigator of the Center for the Study of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements in Russia.
2009 – 2011	Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences, Research Development Initiative. “Changing Vectors of Development: Locating Russia in Development Discourse and Practice”, PI – Dr. Patty Gray. Research Coordinator
2009	Russian Foundation for the Humanities. Field work project № 09-01-18003е “Nomadic Christianization Model: Changing Religious Practices of the Yamal Nenets” (“Кочевая модель христианизации: современные трансформации религиозных практик ненцев Ямала”). Researcher

 

Other Work Experience

 

2008		National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Anthropology Department Tutor (Theory and Practice in Anthropology)
2007 – 2008		Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) Russian Academy of Science, St. Petersburg Manager
2007-2009	European Science Foundation’s EUROCORES Programme BOREAS Collaborative Project “New Religious Movements in the Russian North: Competing Uses of Religiosity after Socialism” (NEWREL). European University at St. Petersburg. Conference Coordinator
2006 – 2007		St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy Lecturer (Anthropology of Religion, Ethnology, History of Religion)
2005		St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy Head of Curriculum Department
2000 – 2005		St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy Conference and Project Manager

 

Scholarships, Grants and Awards

 

2010-2013	Global Supplementary Grant Program (GSGP), Network Scholarship Programs of the Open Society Institute.
2008-2013	John and Pat Hume PhD Fellowship, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
2012 2012	National University of Ireland Maynooth conference grant. Travel bursary from the Wenner-Gren Foundation grant and the EASA travel fund
2011	Field research grant from the CRCC Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative, University of Southern California, the John Templeton Foundation.
2008	Field research grant from European University at St. Petersburg.
2006	Field research grant from European University at St. Petersburg.
2005-2006	HESP Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching (Open Society Institute) scholarship to participate in summer schools: “Paradigms of Cohabitation, Tolerance and Interreligious Dialogue”; “Religious Pluralism and Fundamentalism. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Religious Studies”; “How to Teach on Pluralism and Fundamentalism in Religious Studies?”, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

 

Field Research

 

2015, August-September	Crimea, Ukraine. “Unemployment, Labour Migration and Grassroots Economic Strategies in Crimea in the late Soviet period and after the fall of the Soviet Union”, PI Dr. Francisco Arqueros (Irish Research Council – Marie Curie Action). Field research assistant:
2011, February – August	Russian North-Western Siberia (Yamal region and Komi Republic). Supported by CRCC Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative, University of Southern California and the National University of Ireland Maynooth. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Research project: Arctic Evangelical Missionary Movement and Religious Conversion among the nomadic Nenets and Khanty indigenous people.
2008, April – May	Russian North-Western Siberia (Yamal region and Komi Republic). Research project: Arctic Evangelical Missionary Movement and Religious Conversion among the nomadic Nenets and Khanty indigenous people. Supported by the European University at St. Petersburg.
2006, November-December	Russian North-Western Siberia (Yamal region and Komi Republic). Supported by the European University at St. Petersburg. Research project: Traditional Nomadic Culture and Religious Practices of the Yamal Nenets Indigenous Peoples.

 

Personal skills and competences

 

Languages: Russian, English, Ukrainian, and Spanish.

 

Research Management: Wide experience in coordinating and administering numerous international conferences and research projects (took part in organizing over 20 conferences, workshops, seminars, and research projects) have made me competent in research management. I have developed my project management skills including research budget management, international fundraising, commercialization of research and public outreach, coordinating grant applications and reports.

 

My responsibilities in different years included: records management, supervising administrative activities, administrative and IT-related tasks, public relations.

 

Publications

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana (forthcoming 2018). Chronotopes of Conversion and the Production of Christian Fundamentalism in the Post-Soviet Arctic. Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies, Vol. 17(1).

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2017a. “Indigeneity and Religious Conversion in Siberia: Nenets ‘Eluding’ Culture and Indigenous Revitalization” In Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews. Comparative Studies on Contemporary Eurasia, India and South America. Ed. by L. Gusy and J. Kapalo. LIT Verlag. Ethnologie: Forschung und Wissenschaft. Pp. 207-229.

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2017b. “Blood” Kinship and Kinship in Christ’s Blood: Nomadic Evangelism in the Nenets Tundra. Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, Vol. 11(1):151-169.

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2014. “Nenets ‘ritualized resistance’: religious conversion as a strategy of empowerment”. In The Postcolonial Arctic. Conference Proceedings. University of Leeds. Pp. 16-17.

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2011. “Radical change for the sake of continuity: Christianity in Nenets Society” In New Movements in Religion. Theories and Trends. 10th Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions. 18-22 September. Budapest, Hungary. Pp. 112-114.

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2011. “V poiskakh sokhranenia… Religioznoe obraschenie kak mekhanizm adaptatsii yamalskikh nentsev” [For the sake of continuity… Religious conversion as an adaptation mechanism for Yamal Nenets indigenous people] In Sud’ba dialoga v usloviakh globalizatsii i sotsial’no-kul’turnikh transformatsii. Salekhard. Pp. 268-274.

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2008. “Traditsionnaya kul’tura nentsev Yamala v predstavlenii khristanskikh missionerov: yazychestvo ili ‘Vetkhii zavet’?” [Yamal Nenets Traditional Culture in the Perception of Christian Missionaries: Paganism or ‘Old Testament’?] In Radlovskii sbornik. St.-Petersburg: MAE (Kunstkamera) RAS. Pp. 257-263.

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2007. “‘Neudobnaya vera’. Religioznoye obrashchenie nentsev Yamala” [‘Inconvenient Faith’. Religious Conversion of Yamal Nenets] In Slaviansky Khod. Materialy i Issledovaniia. Issue 3. St.-Petersburg: MAE (Kunstkamera) RAS. Pp. 151-155.

 

Vagramenko, Tatiana. 2006. Znakharstvo [Witchcraft]. Religious Studies. Encyclopedia. Moscow: Akademicheskii proekt. Pp. 364-365.

 

Conference Presentations and Invited Talks

 

2017 “Arctic Entangled Sustainabilities: (De)constructing Indigeneity”. Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society “Entangled Mobilities”, 22th—23th of May, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

2016 “The Production of Religious Fundamentalism and Unmaking of Modernity in the Russian Arctic”. II International Anthropological Congress AIBR, Barcelona, 6-9 September.

2016 “Modernity Tensions and Nenets ‘Ritualized Resistance’: Evangelical Conversion as a Strategy of Empowerment”. Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) “Relocating Religion”. Helsinki, Finland, 28 June – 1 July.

2015 “Remembering the Past in the ‘Born-again’ Present: Conversion of Nenets and Khanty Oral Histories”. 12th International ETMU Days conference “Mobile Roots – Rethinking Indigenous and Transnational ties”, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland, 22-24 October.

2015 “Nenets ‘Ritualized Resistance’: Religious Conversion as a Strategy of Empowerment”. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting “Familiar Strange”, Denver, Colorado, USA, 20 November.

2014 “Indigeneity and Religious Conversion in Siberia: ‘Eluding’ Culture or Indigenous Revitalization?” Workshop “Eurasian Alterities: Comparative perspectives on Indigenous and Minority Worldviews”, Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews Study Centre (MEWSC), University College Cork, Ireland, 13 November.

2014 “Changing Religious Landscape, In Search of Sustainability: Religious Conversion in the Polar Ural Tundra”. International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences VIII, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada, 22-26 May.

2014 “The Local Failure of the Global Movement, or: Max Weber is Not Alive and Well in the Nenets Tundra”. International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS), European Conference “Mission and Money – Mission in the context of global inequalities”, Helsinki, Finland, 3-6 April.

2014 “Religious Conversion and Nenets Bricolage: Making Modernity in the Russian Arctic”. Presented at the Anthropology Department seminar series, National University of Ireland Maynooth, 13 March.

2013 “Nenets ‘Ritualized Resistance’: The Role of Religious Conversion in Indigenous Awakening”. European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, 18 December.

2012 “Doubting the Future, Defending the Past: Indigenous Peoples of Siberia Internalizing Christianity”. The 12th EASA Biennial Conference “Uncertainty and Disquiet”, Nanterre, France, 13 July.

2012 “Missionization ‘Inside Out’: Tundra as a Source of Christianity”. International conference “De-Secularizing the Post-Soviet World”, European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, 11 May.

2012 “Caution, University? How Academia Can Construct Society’s Needs”. The Open Society Institute, Global Supplementary Grant Program Conference, Cambridge, 2 April.

2011 “Charismatic and Baptist Missionary Activities among the Nenets and Khanty Indigenous Peoples (Russian Far North)”. PCRI Center for the Study of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements in Russia Workshop, Budapest, 23 September.

2011 “Radical Change for the Sake of Continuity. Charismatic and Baptist Conversion Strategies among the Nenets Indigenous People”. 10th conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions EASR, Budapest, 21 September.

2008 “Between the Tundra and a Village: New Forms of Social Interaction among the Nenets”. Seminar at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, 8 May.

2008 “Traditional Culture of the Siberian Nenets through the Eyes of Christian Missionaries: ‘Paganism’ or the Old Testament?” Conference ‘Radloff Readings’, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, 3 March.

2007 “Traditional Culture of Yamal Nenets and the Protestant Missionary Movement: Cross-cultural Understanding”. New Religious Movements in the Russian North: Competing uses of Religiosity After Socialism, ESF EUROCORES Programme BOREAS Workshop, St. Petersburg, Russia, 22 November.

2007 “Shamans, ‘Babushki’ and the Living God: Representation of Nenets ‘Traditional Culture’ in Nenets Conversion Narratives”. Seminar at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, 15 November.

2007 “Inappropriate Faith: Religious Conversion of Yamal Nenets”. Conference “Exhibition of Achievements of Scholar Enterprise (VDNKh)”, European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, 19 October.

2007 “Protestant Missionary Strategies among the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Arctic and Latin America: Comparative Analysis”. Seminar at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, 9 June.

2007 “To Be a True Nenets… Images of ‘Traditional Yamal Nenets Culture’”. Fieldwork seminar at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, 9 June.