Yuri Kirillovich Chistov

Yuri Kirillovich CHISTOV, Doctor of Sciences, graduated from the department of Ethnography and Anthropology of the Faculty of History, Lenindrad (Saint-Petersburg) State University in 1976, and received a full-time postgraduate training at the Department of Anthropology of the Leningrad Branch of N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology (since 1992 - Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography(Kunstkamera) of RAS) in 1976-79. He worked at the Department of Anthropology as a Junior Research Officer (1979), a Research Officer (1986), a Senior Research Officer (1992), and Leading Research Officer (2001). In 1983 he defended his candidate dissertation titled “ Differentiation of Human Populations Based on Median-Sagittal Cranial Profiles” , and in 2000 he defended his doctoral thesis based on his monograph “ Anthropology of Ancient and Modern Populations of South Yemen” .

He was elected director of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) for a five-year term on November 15, 2001, at the general meeting of the Section of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. On April 29, 2002, his status was endorsed by the Prime-minister decree № 578-r.

His scholarly interests concern physical anthropology of ancient and modern populations of the Near East, Eastern Mediterranean, and Central Asia; evolutionary morphology of the human cranium; paleopathology; methods of multivariate statistical analysis of anthropological material; applied databases in anthropological studie; computerized catalogs of museum collections;   museology. He has more than 80 publications, and he has designed several specialized databases (including the Russian craniological data bank ), and computer software for the statistical treatment of anthropological data.

He has participated in anthropological and archaeological expeditions to the Far East, South Siberia, Central Asia, North-West and Central Russia, and South Yemen.

In 1993-94 he held a fellowship at Durham University (Great Britain), and in 1996 at the Institute of Anthropology of Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He has lectured in a number of European universities, he is a member of editorial boards of several Russian and foreign scientific journals, he represents Russia in several international scientific societies and associations and is a co-founder and a member of the governing body of the World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA). In 2003 he was elected President of the Association of Anthropologists and Ethnographers of Russia.