Prof. Dr. Donatas Brandišauskas

Donatas Brandišauskas is an associated professor of anthropology at the faculty of history of University of Vilnius, Lithuania. He received his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland in 2009. He has carried out ethnographic field research in Southeastern Siberia that has focused on perception of landscape, human-animal relations, and placemaking of indigenous Evenki reindeer herders and hunters in the Zabaikal Region, Buryatya Republic, South Yakutya, and the Amur Region (Russian Federation). He is the author of the monograph Leaving Footprints in the Taiga: Luck, Spirits, and Ambivalence among the Siberian Orochen Reindeer Herders and Hunters (Berghahn Books, 2017). His current interests include Evenki land use, human-predator (wolf, bear) relations, and conflicts within strict nature reserves. He is an honorary research fellow at Aberdeen University in Scotland, and associate researcher at University of Versailles (CEARC) in France.

RCC Research Project: Contested Land Use and Subsistence in the Olekma River Basin: The Natural Reserve and Indigenous Village Interactions

Selected Publications:

• Leaving Footprints in the Taiga: Luck, Rituals, and Ambivalence among Orochen-Evenki. Berghahn Books: New York, 2017.
• “Local Environmental Knowledge: Environmental Use and Symbolism of Fire among Orochen-Evenki Reindeer Herders and Hunters of Zabaikal’ia.” In Fire, Water, Wind, and Stone in Evenki Landscapes: Human-Nature Relations in Baikal Siberia, edited by Vladimir N. Davydov, 98–125. St. Petersburg: Kunstkamera petropolitana, 2016. (published in Russian)
• “Symbolism and Ecological Uses of Fire among Orochen-Evenki.” Sibirica 6, no. 1. (2007): 95–109.
• “Making a Home in the Taiga: Movements, Paths, and Signs among Orochen-Evenki Hunters and Herders of Zabaikal Krai (South East Siberia).” Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 6, no. 1 (2012): 9–25.
• “Contested Health in the Post-Soviet Taiga: Use of Landscape, Spirits, and Strength among Orochen-Evenki of Zabaikal’e (East Siberia).” In The Healing Landscapes of Central and Southeastern Siberia, edited by David G. Anderson, 125–44. Alberta, Canada: University of Alberta Press, 2011.