Identities of cities and within cities

On November 15th, 2013, at Tomsk State University, in the framework of the project “Man in a Changing World. Identity and Social Adaptation: Past and Present”, the Laboratory for Social and Anthropological Research together with the European Union Centre in Siberia (EUCES) held an international methodological seminar on theoretical issues of studying identity in the urban space.

Key issues discussed during the seminar included contemporary theoretical vectors of urban anthropology, construction and transformation of individual and collective identities in the urban space, and the specifics of formation and maintaining social and ethnic identity of city dwellers coming from indigenous peoples of the North.

Among leading scholars and specialists in anthropology and urban studies that took part in the seminar were:

Hugh Beach*, professor of the Department of cultural anthropology and ethnology at the University of Uppsala (Sweden);
Peter Schweitzer*, professor of the Department of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna (Austria);
Elena Trubina*, professor of the Department of social philosophy at the Ural Federal University (Russia);
Sergey Sokolovskiy*, senior research fellow of the Institute of ethnology and anthropology (Russian Academy of Sciences), editor-in-chief of the ‘Ethnographical Review’ (Russia);
Elena Miskova, associate professor of the Department of ethnology at the Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia);
Sergey Pirogov, associate professor of the Department of sociology of the Faculty of philosophy, Tomsk State University (Russia).

* Members of International Research Advisory Board for the project “Man in a Changing World. Identity and Social Adaptation: Past and Present”.

The seminar was moderated by professor Dmitry Funk, the head of the project “Man in a Changing World. Problems of Identity and Social Adaptation: Past and Present”.