Tatiana Bulgakova was born in Khabarovsk. In 1980, she began her first fieldwork among the Nanai and completed her second (doctorate) PhD dissertation on socio-religious aspects of Nanai culture in 2001. Since 1986 she has been teaching cultural anthropology and folklore of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North at the Herzen State Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg. Her work has been supported by scholarships from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, U.S.A. (Fulbright Program), from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany and the Institute for Advan...