Elena Adasheva-Klein is an anthropologist and visual artist working in the polar regions. She is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at Yale University. Light and dark in the Arctic is the topic of Elena’s current ethnographic research projects. Her doctoral dissertation, based on a nine-month fieldwork in northern Siberia, explores human-environment relations, urban infrastructure, and energy governance in the Russian Arctic. Elena’s fieldwork was supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Councils for International Education. In 2023, Elena was one of the scientists selected to work on the ARICE-PONANT Polar Expedition Ship “Le Commandant Charcot” with her original research project, investigating perceptions of light in the Arctic landscape. Elena’s research interests also include science diplomacy in the Arctic and Antarctic. This collaborative work aims to center non-state actors in the international polar science, as opposed to nation-states, while regarding science diplomacy as serving and resulting from the production of scientific knowledge in the polar environments. Elena received the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Eva Kastan Grove Fellowship from the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute in New York. She holds an MPhil in Sociocultural Anthropology from Yale University and a B.A. in Anthropology and Studio Art from Hunter College of the City University of New York where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. Elena is a founder of the Polar Research and Education Library with a focus on social sciences and humanities of the polar regions.
