Dr. Roza Laptander

Roza Laptander is a Nenets linguistic anthropologist. Her research interests are based on sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, documentation the Nenets language and spoken history of the Western Siberian Nenets. In her work she describes the Nenets memories about the past and their present life in the Yamal tundra. Also she is describing Nenets’ culture, language and customs in the tundra of northwest Siberia from an inside perspective.

In March 2008, she defended her Russian doctoral thesis at the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia on a topic "The category of definiteness /indefiniteness in the structure of the Nenets simple sentence".

In April 2020, Roza has successfully defended her Western PhD thesis at the University of Lapland "When we got reindeer, we moved to live to the tundra: The Spoken and Silenced History of the Yamal Nenets". This dissertation is based on the stories of the Nenets reindeer herders from the Yamal peninsula, Western Siberia. It shows that spoken stories and interviews concerning big changes on the tundra reflect a general mechanism of making Nenets official historical narratives. Through analyzing silence in the example of the Yamal Nenets people stories, Laptander studied the role of silence and silencing offering a new approach to understanding how small indigenous societies keep memories and stories about their past.

At the present time she is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and a visiting researcher at the University of Lapland, Finland.

She is a member of the Charter project, works in WP 3: SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF ARCTIC ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES ON INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES, project leader prof. J. Otto Habeck.

https://www.charter-arctic.org/work-packages/work-package-3/

A new BBC film about the dramatic climate change effect on the life of the Arctic people: “Is There Hope for Reindeer in a Warming Arctic?”

Global climate change is not a future problem, but it is a reality of our everyday life. We notice that our climate is not the same as it was even one decade ago. Changes in climate are especially difficult to those people who live in the Arctic regions.

The new BBC Earth film “Is There Hope for Reindeer in a Warming Arctic?” tells a story about climate change in the Arctic tundra, drawing on the example of the Yamal Nenets reindeer herders from Western Siberia.

The Nenets people are nomadic reindeer herders. They live and migrate with big herds of reindeer in the tundra of the Arctic Siberia. Their entire lifestyle is based on their work with reindeer. Reindeer herders reported that during recent decades winters are much shorter and warmer than they were in previous times. There are more winter rains, causing the formation of ice crusts. If there is an ice cover on the snow or frozen ground such conditions are a complete disaster for people and their reindeer: when reindeer cannot get any access to lichen and other food, they can die from starvation during a very short period of time. This had already happened several times in the Yamal Peninsula during icing periods from 2013 to 2021. The most severe icing event was in 2013-2014 when 60.000 reindeer died from starvation. Another bad icing event in the Yamal tundra was in 2019. This film tells the story about it.

Dr Roza Laptander, researcher from the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Hamburg, took part in the production of the film together with Prof. Dr Florian Stammler from the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi. They accompanied the BBC film crew during their journey to Yamal Peninsula in 2019. For the film Dr Roza Laptander talked directly to the Nenets people in their native language about their difficulties in life due to the changing climate.

Watch the film "Is There Hope for Reindeer in a Warming Arctic?“ | Our Frozen Planet | BBC Earth

Read more about the cooperation of researchers with the film companies here.

[Caption: The BBC team working in the tundra, Yamal Peninsula. Photo: Roza Laptander 2019] 

Publications for the year 2024:

Roza Laptander, Florian M. Stammler, Bruce Forbes, and Sari Stark (2024). Ways of Identifying Lichen and Plant Species by the Nenets reindeer herders in Yamal. Arctic Science, 9 October 2024.

Roza Laptander, Bruce C. Forbes, and Timo Kumpula (2024). From Gorbachev’s Murmansk Speech to the Present: 37 Years of International Collaboration in Northern Russia. in A Fractured North – Journeys on Hold, edited by Erich Kasten, Igor Krupnik, Gail Fondahl: 15-34. Fürstenberg/Havel: Kulturstiftung Sibirien.

Roza Laptander, Florian M. Stammler, Bruce Forbes, and Sari Stark (2024). Ways of Identifying Lichen and Plant Species by the Nenets reindeer herders in Yamal (In Publication, accepted by Arctic Science, 24 June 2024).

Publications for the year 2023:

Laptander, Roza (2023). "The tundra Nenets' fire rites, or what is hidden inside of the Nenets female needlework bag tutsya" a chapter for a book Siberian World. 

Laptander, Roza. (2023). The Yamal Nenets’ traditional and contemporary environmental knowledge of snow, ice, and permafrost. Ecology and Society 28(3).

Laptander, Roza et al. (2023). Critical Seasonal Conditions in the Reindeer-Herding Year: A Synopsis of Factors and Events in Fennoscandia and Northwestern Russia

Publications for the year 2022:

Istomin, Kirill, Roza Laptander and Otto Habeck (2022). Reindeer herding statistics in Russia: issues of reliability, interpretation, and political effect. DOI:10.1186/s13570-022-00233-9 Corpus ID: 248184506. Published 15 April 2022. Pastoralism. 19 (2022). 

Laptander Roza (2022). Ngesiko’ Laptander’s Pi’ sarma khnytabts.Julkaisija: Helsingin yliopiston kirjasto ; Päiväys: 2022 ; Kieli: eng.Pp.: 383-396 

Laptander Roza (2022) The Nenets’ Sacred Places: The singing mountain Yanganya Pe.

Doering N., Dudeck S., Elverum Sh., Fisher Ch., Henriksen J.E., Herrmann T., Kramvig B., Laptander R., Milton J., Omma E.M. (2022) Improving the relationships between Indigenous rights holders and researchers in the Arctic: an invitation for change in funding and collaboration Environmental Research Letters, Volume 17, Number 6, Focus on Arctic Change: Transdisciplinary Research and Communication.Published 10 June 2022.

Forbes B., Kumpula T., Messhtyb N., Laptander R., Macias-Fauria M., Zetterberg P., Verdonen M., Skarin A., Kwang-Yul K., Boisvert L. N.,  Stroeve J. C., Bartsch A.(2022).  Coping with a Warming Winter Climate in Arctic Russia: Patterns of Extreme Weather Affecting Nenets Reindeer Nomadism. In book: Resilience Through Knowledge Co-Production. June 2022 DOI: 10.1017/9781108974349.017

Povoroznyuk, O., Vincent W.F., Schweitzer, P., Laptander, R., Bennett M., Calmels, F., Sergeev D., Arp Ch., Forbes, B., Roy-Léveillée, P., Walker, D. (2022). Arctic roads and railways: social and environmental consequences of transport infrastructure in the circumpolar North. Publication: Arctic Science 11 August 2022. 

Translations for the film Is There Hope for Reindeer in a Warming Arctic?“ | Our Frozen Planet | BBC Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyLt-m_UqUM

PUBLISHED articles for the year 2021:

1) Arctic rain on snow events: bridging observations to understand environmental and livelihood impacts
Serreze, M. C., Gustafson, J., Barrett, A. P., Druckenmiller, M. L., Fox, S., Voveris, J., Stroeve, J., Sheffield, B., Forbes, B. C., Rasmus, S., Laptander, R., Brook, M., Brubaker, M., Temte, J., McCrystall, M. R. & Bartsch, A., 6 Oct 2021, In: Environmental research letters. 105009.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
Open Access

2) Book Review: The image of the universe in the folklore of the Nenets: Systematic and phenomenological analysis
Laptander, R., 29 Jan 2021, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Polar Record : a Journal of Arctic and Antarctic Research. 57, 7
Research output: Contribution to journal › Book / Film / Article review › Scientific

3) The Covid-19 app and the fire spirit: Receiving messages in Britain and Siberia
Laptander, R. & Vitebsky, P., 1 Dec 2021, In: Anthropology Today. 37, 6, p. 17-20
Research output: Contribution to journal › Review Article › Scientific › peer-review
Open Access

4) The Weight of Words and the Power of Silence in the Nenets Life Story Narratives. Laptander, R., 26 Jun 2021 Vol. 2(111). p. 60-78
Open Access

BOOK 2021:
FOLKLORE OF THE YAMAL NENETS, Issue 3, FOLKLORE OF MYSKAMENSKY NENETS. Short fairy tales, riddles, proverbs, sayings, and anecdotes in the Nenets language, сollected by Nina Yanotovna Yaptik in the Myskamenskaya tundra. Compiled by Roza Laptander and Stella, 2021. – 172 с. : ил. published in Oct. 2021.

More information:

https://research.ulapland.fi/en/persons/roza-laptander/publications/

https://independent.academia.edu/RozaLaptander