Nastassja Martin is a French anthropologist who carried out her research among the Evens people in the Kamchatka mountains, in the far east of Russia. During one of her stays in this region, an unexpected and violent encounter with a bear gives rise to a political story about what this encounter between human and animal causes in the ways of socialisation of the two cultures that cross it — the European and the Evens. This account, published in the book Croire aux fauves (In the Eye of the Wild) (2019), is a poetic narration that conveys the unspeakable of this experience, through both the intertwining between dreams and reality, and through the dissolution of boundaries between the human and the non-human.

In partnership with the Institut français du Portugal, Nastassja Martin presents a conference based on this book and her current research in dialogue with Cristina Brito, associate professor in the Department of History at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and integrated researcher at CHAM — Centro de Humanidades.

The conference is followed by the screening of the film Tvaïan, by Mike Magidson and Nastassja Martin.