Director of Postgraduate Studies in the Department of Anthropology

Second year Coordinator

Student Drop-in Hours Spring 2013: Tuesdays 11am-1pm, 2-4pm

Please see my personal website

Patty A. Gray is currently a full-time permanent Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the National University of ireland Maynooth. She was previously a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which followed a three-year post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin Madison, along with a Graduate Certificate in Russian, East European and Central Asia Studies; her MA in Anthropology from Southern Illinois University Carbondale; and her BA in Communication (Journalism) from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Current Research Interests: Critical perspectives on development, development studies and international relations; ‘emerging’ donors; NGOs-as-civil society; voluntarism and professionalization; political economy; socialism and postsocialism; theories of the gift; Russia, E. Europe, Africa.

Additional Areas of Expertise: Anthropological ethics; indigenous peoples; pastoralism; privatization and property relations; anthropology of religion; circumpolar Arctic.

Dr. Gray held research fellowships and awards from the MacArthur Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Social Science Research Council, IREX (The International Research and Exchanges Board, which has a legacy of funding university exchanges to the former Soviet Union/Russia since 1968), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Science Foundation, the European Science Foundation, the Max Planck Society, and the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS).

Dr. Gray has been teaching at the university level for over 20 years. She has taught as a postgraduate student at the University of Wisconsin Madison and Southern Illinois University Carbondale; as an adjunct at Central Missouri State University; and as a faculty member at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the National University of Ireland Maynooth. She has guest lectured at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, and at Université Lumière Lyon 2, France.

Selected Publications

Book: 2005. The Predicament of Chukotka’s Indigenous Movement: Post-Soviet Activism in the Russian Far North. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ongoing blog of essays: Russian Things Unpacked: aid, opposition, etc.

In Preparation: "Russia as a recruited development donor and 'donor expansion'"

In Preparation: "Russia as a (re)emerging donor: Toward a phenomenology of development donorship"

In Preparation: "Russian Orthodoxy and the Subversive Slot: Early Post-Soviet Religious Practices in Magadan." In Doing Religion in the Russian North: Uses of Religiosity After Socialism, ed. by Patrick Plattet, Virginie Vate and Patty Gray.

Submitted: Современое состояние оленеводства на Чукотке (The Contemporary State of Reindeer Herding in Chukotka). Forthcoming in the Russian journal Этнографическое Обозрение.

2012. "For Russian foreign aid, a second act". Interviewed for Devex Executive Member Insight, 19 March 2012.

2012. "'I Should Have Some Deer, But I Don't Remember How Many': Confused Ownership of Reindeer in Chukotka." In Who Owns the Stock? Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals, ed. by Guenther Schlee and Anatoly Khazanov. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Read a review of the book and this chapter of the book in The Toronto Review of Books.

2011. "Looking 'The Gift' in the mouth: Russia as donor". Anthropology Today 27(2):5-8.

2011. "The Emerging Powers and the Changing Landscape of Foreign Aid and Development Cooperation: Public Perceptions of Development Cooperation Summary Paper 4: RUSSIA". Project Report for a DFID-funded collaborative project, http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/foreignaidperceptions/

2011. Collaborated in producing the book Going Forward Looking Back: Reflections on two decades of Irish charity work in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. by Frances Haworth. Dublin: Eastern Europe Aid and Development Network.

2011. (With Thomas Strong) "The place of ethics in Ireland and elsewhere". Anthropology News March 2011, p.22.

2010. "Does Charity Wound?" Profile in the NUIM Research Magazine, September 2010.

Selected Invited Lectures & Presentations

2012: "Russia as a Re-emerging Donor: Towards a Phenomenology of Development Donorship". In the panel organized by Patty Gray 'EMERGING DONORS' IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: BORDER CROSSINGS BETWEEN RECIPIENT AND DONOR at the American Anthropological Association annual meetings in San Francisco, CA, 17 November 2012.

2012. "Ethno-Twitterography of Russian Opposition: Following the anti-Putin protests of 2012 via online social media". Seminar Series of the Centre for the Study of Wider Europe, National University of Ireland Maynooth, 26 September 2012.

2012. "Beyond EU Expansion: On Russia as a Recruited Donor and 'Donor Expansion'", presented in the panel "Bridging the Boundaries in International Development Cooperation", organized by Simon Lightfoot and Maja Bucar at the 9th Convention of the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA), Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 20-22 September 2012.

2012. "Russia as a re-emerging donor: Toward a phenomenology of development donorship", presented in the panel "The anthropology of 'emerging donors' and the uncertainty of developmental futures", convened by Patty Gray and Elzbieta Drazkiewicz-Grodzicka at the 12th biennial conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, Nanterre, France, 10-13 July 2012.

2012. Presentation on Russia in the Plenary Session on alternative approaches to development (the 'BRIC view') at the Society for International Development Washington, D.C., Chapter Annual Conference, 5 June 2012.

2012. "The changing landscape of development assistance: Russia as a (re)emerging donor." Queens University Belfast Anthropology Research Seminar, 7 February 2012.

2011. "Emerging donors and the changing landscape of foreign aid: Where does Russia fit?" University of Birmingham International Development Department workshop "A Future for Aid Data", 1 November 2011.

2011. "'Emerging donors' and the changing landscape of foreign aid: Public perceptions of development cooperation". Seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 17 June 2011.

2010. "Russians (re)emerging as donors: Volunteerism, The Gift, and the race not to be 'Third world'". American Anthropological Association 109th Annual Meeting, New Orelans, LA, 17-21 November 2010.

2010. "Changing vectors of development: Russia as Donor". Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Annual International Conference, London, 1-3 September 2010.

2010. "Changing vectors of development: Locating Russia in development discourse and practice". VIII World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, Stockholm, 26-31 July 2010.

2009. "Changing vectors of development: Locating Russia in development discourse and practice". American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies 41st National Convention, Boston, MA, 12-15 November 2009.

2009. "Charity and the gift: A global exploration via ethnography of the Russian Far East." Seminar of the Groupe Societes, Religions, Laicites of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 3 September 2009.

2008. "Where does 'The Arctic' fit in North-South development discourse?" European Science Foundation EUROCORES Programme BOREAS workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany, 6-9 March 2008.

Media Appearances

RTE Prime Time, 16 August 2012, Invited to provide comment on the trial of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot

Newstalk Radio "The Global Village" with Dil Wickremasinghe, 18 August 2012, Invited to provide comment on the trial of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot