Anya Bernstein is a cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. She teaches Anthropology and Social Studies at Harvard University. Her main work to date explores the transformation of Buddhist practice among a Siberian indigenous people known as Buryats, foremost through their post-Soviet renewal of transnational ties with their fellow co-religionists across north and south Asia. To capture these issues ethnographically, Anya conducted multi-sited field research in Buryat communities in Siberia as well as in Tibetan monasteries in India where some Buryat monks currently receive their religious education. Her first book, “Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism,” was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2013. Her current research focuses on visuality, religion, and secularism in contemporary Russia, especially on the recent culture wars around contemporary art. Anya holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from New York University, an M.A. in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester, and a B.S. in Linguistics from Georgetown University.
