Ivanova Elena Vladimirovna
17 March 1934, Leningrad
Biography, education, career:
In 1967 Elena Ivanova defended her Candidate’s Dissertation at the Institute of Ethnography, USSR AS, in Moscow; it was titled The Thai Peoples of Thailand: A Historical and Ethnographic Sketch. In 1993 she defended her Doctoral Dissertation at the MAE RAS, titled Studies on the Culture of the Thai of Thailand. From 1962 she worked as a junior and then senior researcher of the Department of Foreign Asia of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Ethnography, USSR AS. In 1993‑1998 she occupied the position of Academic Secretary of the MAE of RAS. In 2002‑2005 she was Head of the Department of East and Southeast Asia, MAE. Since 2005 she is a lead researcher. She also lectures the Ethnography of Thailand at the Faculty African and Asian Studies, SPSU.
Areas of expertise: History and ethnography of the peoples of Southeast Asia (ethnic composition, ethnic processes, social organization, traditional culture, ethnogenesis of the peoples of Thailand, history of the culture of Thailand); Buddhist studies; History of material culture; foreign Thailand Studies; types of clothes and jewellery of the peoples of Southeast Asia; cataloguing of the MAE collections (textiles of the peoples of continental Southeast Asia, Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist bronze)