Laura Siragusa

My research interests comprise questions related to the revival of heritage languages, language ecology, verbal art and its relations to non-human animals and other beings, domestication, and health.

Since 2008 I have been working with Veps, a Finno-Ugric minority, in northwestern Russia. While my initial interest regarded the promotion of Vepsian heritage language, I later augmented my focus to verbal art and healing practices and human-animals relations as expressed in language.

In 2015 I also began working with Saami in the Kola peninsula, Russia. Here I investigate domestication, reindeer herding practices, and health. 

At the moment (2018), I am working on three main projects:

1. Links between (indigenous) ways of speaking and environmental change

2. Language responsibility

3. Indigenous conceptualization of sustainability

In 2018, my colleague Dr. Ferguson (Univ. Nevada, Reno) and I established an EASA network on Linguistic Anthropology (ELAN) to further develop this discipline within the European context.