Dr Richard Fraser

I am an anthropologist and Associate Professor at UiT – the Arctic University of Norway. I completed my PhD at the University of Leiden and two postdoctoral projects at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge.

I have carried out long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Evenki, Orochen, and Mongol communities in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang province since 2007, as well as with Darhad and Tsaatan communities in Mongolia since 2010.

More recently, I have started new fieldwork in China's Southwest – specifically with Miao communities in Guizhou province.

I am involved in several interrelated projects.

First, I am leading the JPI-funded, “ArcHeritage: Commodification, Identity, and Revitalisation in the Anthropocene”, with partners at the University of Aberdeen (David Anderson) and University of Groningen (Maarten Loonen): https://www.heritageresearch-hub.eu/project/archeritage/

The project explores the commodity chains of three iconic heritage artefacts in the Arctic: reindeer antler, the conical tent, and walrus ivory. We trace the oral histories and new market and social entanglements of these artefacts across several sites in Sápmi, Canada, and Greenland, linking them to historical pastoralist and hunting lifeways and their transformation over time. In recent years, each artefact has taken a new form within the heritage and tourism industries: reindeer antler as Traditional Chinese Medicine, the conical tent as a fixed tourism dwelling, and walrus ivory as souvenir carvings. They thus tell a wider story of Arctic heritage and the relationship between indigenous producers, consumers, and the market: https://en.uit.no/project/archeritage

Connected to this, I am also leading a Network Project "Heritage making in the Arctic", as part of the Thematic Network on Circumpolar Archives, Folklore and Ethnography (CAFE), funded by UArctic: https://www.uarctic.org/activities/thematic-networks/circumpolar-archives-folklore-and-ethnography-cafe/

Second, I am a researcher in the project, "Arctic Silk Road: Imagining Global Infrastructures and Community Boundaries in Sápmi and the Russian North", led by Dr. Natalia Magnani. This is a project funded by the Research Council of Norway, which follows the imagination of global infrastructures across time and space. We focus on experiences of planning and anticipating constructions along the Arctic Silk Road from China across the Circumpolar North—in Sápmi, along the northern Russian coast, and other connected sites. Furthermore, we examine comparative cases of large-scale infrastructural networks historical and emerging: https://en.uit.no/project/arcticsilkroad

For this, I am a Visiting Research Associate at the Arctic Studies Centre at Liaocheng University in China: http://en.asclcu.cn/.

Third, I am writing up the results of an AHRC-funded project: “Imaging Minority Culture: Photography, Digital Sharing, and Cultural Survival in Northeast China” (2017-2019). This was a project to research a previously unseen and recently digitised photographic archive of two ethnic minorities in northeast China: the Ethel John Lindgren Collection of Evenki and Orochen communities at the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Cambridge. The project used the photographs as tools during ethnographic fieldwork amongst contemporary Evenki and Orochen communities, identifying locations, landscapes, and material objects to better understand everyday social life during this formative period in pre-communist China. In addition to working with communities and co-curating an exhibition, the project also documented the process of digital repatriation and sharing and explored their uses by community and state actors in the context of surging interest and investment in 'protecting' minority heritage and culture: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FP004768%2F1

Finally, I am completing a book project: “Skill, Social Change and More-Than-Human Relations in Postsocialist Northern Mongolia”, based on my PhD fieldwork and currently under contract with University of Amsterdam Press. 

I am the Head of the EA:RTH Research Group at UiT (https://uit.no/research/earth) and continue to work closely with colleagues at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. I am a member of CIRE (Cambridge Interdisciplinary Research on the Environment https://www.cire.group.cam.ac.uk) and the Climate Histories Seminar Series.