Ivanova Lyudmila Alekseevna
5 June 1941, Leningrad — 24 March 2017, Moscow
Biography, education, career:
On 19 June 1970 Lyudmila Ivanova defended her Candidate’s Dissertation at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Ethnography, USSR AS; it was titled Identifying the Afanasyevo Culture of the Middle Yenisey and Its Paleoethnographic Features. In 1964‑1973 she worked at the Leningrad Branch of N.N. Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography, USSR AS (presently – Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), RAS ). From 1973 she successively occupied the positions of junior researcher (1973–1987), researcher (1987–1989), and senior researcher (from 1989) at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR AS in Moscow. A serious archaeological background and a vast field work experience in the isles of Oceania could not but influence Ivanova’s ethnographic research, particularly, her works on the traditional culture of the peoples of Oceania. While working in Oceania, she met N.N. Mishutushkin (Nikolai Michoutouchkine), an artist by profession and ethnographer by avocation, a Russian born in France who lived in Vanuatu, and his colleague, artist Aloï Pilioko. This meeting had a pivotal role in the life and work of L.A. Ivanova, resulting in the publication of several tour guides, catalogues and articles, which were translated into French and English. It is due to the Michoutouchkine-Pilioko Foundation that L.A. Ivanova could conduct field research and study museum collections in the many museums and archives of the Australian-Oceanic Region. Apart from studying the ethnography of the reoples of Oceania, Ivanova collected materials about the collections from the round-the-world voyages of James Cook. For the last few years of her life, L. Ivanova worked on the book titled Materials and Research on the Source Studies and Attribution of the MAE’s Collections from Oceania. Part II. Collection of N.N. Miklukho-Maklay.
Areas of expertise: History and ethnography of the peoples of Australia and Oceania; paleoethnography of the peoples of South Siberia; problems of museum source studies of an ethnographic item; cataloguing ethnographic collections; a museum item as a historical and ethnographic source; exhibiting ethnographic collections; N.N. Miklukho-Maklay’s ethnographic collections and drawings as a source for studying indigenous peoples of Oceania of the 19th century