ISITO Kemerovo Branch

Veronika Bizyukova was born in 1961 in Kemerovo, where she studies economics at Kemerovo State University, getting married and beginning to bring up two children at the same time. After graduation, she worked for two years in the regional statistical department, an experience which led her irresistibly to qualitative methods of research. She accepted an offer to return to the University to join the sociology laboratory and in 1991 followed an advanced sociology course in Moscow. Now Veronika combines an ability to track down quantitative data in the chaos of the state statistical agencies with the capacity to penetrate the finest subtleties of concrete situations arising in people's lives in enterprises. After a very large number of interviews with miners about their difficult situation in Kuzbass coal enterprises the thought occurred to her, 'If it is difficult for men here, what is it like for the women?' So recently she has begun researching the position of women in coal-mining.

Inna Donova was born in 1964 in Kemerovo into a family of musicians. In 1986 she graduated from the economics faculty of Kemerovo State University, after which she remained there to work in the department of the economics and sociology of labour, where she now teaches social problems of management and participates in various research projects. She can play three musical instruments, and likes jazz, soul and rhythm and blues. She is married with a ten-year-old daughter.

Lena Varshavksaya

Konstantin Burnyshev was born in 1964 in the miners' town of Osinniki, Kemerovo oblast, his father being a mining engineer, his mother working in the ventilation section of the local mine. He graduated from the trade college in Novokuznetsk as a 'seller of cultural products', but became interested in psychology, which he went to study at Moscow State University in 1982. After university he was sent to work in the Leninskugol' coal concern in Kuzbass, when he came into contact with Petr Bizyukov and the Sociology Laboratory of Kemerovo University. Tiring of eating in canteens, Kostya returned to his parents' house in Osinniki and got a job working for the local coal concern, Kuznetskugol', as a psychologist. He left Kuznetskugol' in 1996 to concentrate on research and teaching. He also keeps bees, buying a car and an apartment with the money earned from the sale of honey.

Olga Pulyaeva is a sociologist who lives in Novokuznetsk and has worked for many years in the Sociology Department of Kuznetskugol. She left her job in 1996 to move to Saint Petersburg with her daughter, although she returns regularly to Novokuznetsk