Sveta Yamin-Pasternak University of Alaska Fairbanks

A cultural anthropologist with collaborations across the disciplines of art, engineering, and environmental and health sciences, Sveta Yamin-Pasternak cares deeply about her longtime adoptive homeland in the Dene Tanana Lands near Fairbanks, Alaska. So strong is her enchantment with the North, that even as a postdoctoral scholar at Johns Hopkins University, she has persuaded her mentor, the late great Professor Sidney Mintz who is credited with a foundational role in the study of food and culture, to jointly travel around Alaska while contemplating Arctic cuisines, which Sveta investigates through a vibrant kaleidoscopic lens of beauty, health, identity, and social relations.