Elena is open for work in research and education at academic institutions, international organizations, and nonprofits with interest in the Polar regions. Based in New York City, she welcomes opportunities to join expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. Elena is an early career Polar social scientist and visual artist. She is committed to fostering intercultural communication and interdisciplinary collaborations in Polar research and education.Currently, Elena is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at Yale University. Light and dark in the Polar regions is the topic of Elena’s ethnographic research projects. Her dissertation, based on a nine-month fieldwork in the Arctic, explores human-environment relations, urban infrastructure, and energy governance in the northern Siberia. Elena’s fieldwork was supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Councils for International Education. In 2023, Elena was one of the scientists selected to work on the ARICE-PONANT Polar Expedition Ship “Le Commandant Charcot” with her original research project, exploring perceptions of light in the Arctic landscape. Elena’s second research interest includes science diplomacy in the Arctic and Antarctic. This collaborative work aims to center non-state actors in the international Polar science, as opposed to nation-states, while regarding science diplomacy as serving and resulting from the production of scientific knowledge in the Polar environments. Elena is a board member of the USAPECS, a United States national committee of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS). In 2022, she represented APECS at the EU-PolarNet webinar “Who owns the Arctic? — an Introduction to Arctic Governance” together with Volker Rachold, head of the German Arctic Office at the Alfred Wegener Institute. Elena served as a grant application reviewer on the Icelandic Research Fund’s expert panel on social sciences, law, and educational sciences.