Gracheva Galina Nikolaevna
18 November 1934, Leningrad — 15 May 1993, Chukotka
Biography, education, career:
Galina Gracheva survived the Siege of Leningrad. From 1962 she worked at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Ethnography, USSR AS, successively occupying the positions from technician to leading researcher at the Department of Siberia. In 1974 she defended her Candidate’s Dissertation, titled Early Concepts of Man in the Nganasan Culture (on the Material of the Funeral Rites of the 19th – early 20th Centuries). Gracheva was an experienced field researcher: she spent over 20 seasons in the Arctic zone. Galina Gracheva died in an air crash on the Chukotka during a joint Russian-French expedition.
Areas of expertise: History and ethnography of the peoples of Siberia, the Extreme North, and the Far East; History and ethnography of Finno-Ugric peoples; ethnography of the Nganasans