Maria Czaplicka

Maria Antonina Czaplicka , also referred to as Marya Antonina Czaplicka and Marie Antoinette Czaplicka, was a Polish cultural anthropologist who is best known for her ethnography of Siberian shamanism. Czaplickas research survives in three major works her studies in Aboriginal Siberia a travelogue published as My Siberian Year and a set of lectures published as The Turks of Central Asia . Curzon Press republished all three volumes, plus a fourth volume of articles and letters, in 1999.

Czaplicka was born in the Stara Praga district of Warsaw in 1884, into an impoverished Polish nobility family. She started her studies with the socalled Flying University , an underground institution of higher education in Russianheld Poland. She supported herself with a number of poorly paid jobs, as a teacher, secretary, and ladys companion. She also wrote poetry, and a novel for children called Olek Niedziela. In 1910 she became the first woman to receive a Mianowski Scholarship, and was therefore able to continue her studies in the United Kingdom.

Source: Wikipedia