Berkley Center

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer is a faculty fellow at the Berkley Center and a research professor in the Department of Anthropology at Georgetown University, where she previously was affiliated with the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies. Balzer's research is in social theory, inter-ethnic relations, religion, the dynamics of nationalism, and the anthropology of the Russian Federation. Her extensive fieldwork has focused on Siberia and Central Asia. She has taught at the Universities of Illinois and Pennsylvania and held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard, Columbia, and the Woodrow Wilson Center's Kennan Institute. Her publications include Galvanizing Nostalgia: Contested Ecological, Cultural and Political Sovereignty in East Siberia (under review), Interrelating Politics, Ecology and Spirituality in Siberia’s Far East: Sakha, Buryatia and Tuva (2013), and Shamans, Spirituality, and Cultural Revitalization: Explorations in Siberia and Beyond (2012). Balzer is also editor of the journal Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia. She holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and M.A. and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College.