Nina Afanasyeva

[1] In 1963, she completed her studies in pedagogy at the Institute of the Peoples of the North in Leningrad and worked until 1983 as a teacher of Russian language and literature as well as German in adult education in the cities of Apatity and Murmansk.

In addition to the dictionary, Afanasyeva co-authored the publication of a series of textbooks and didactic materials for the Kildin language.

She was instrumental in founding the Association of Sámi in Murmansk Oblast in 1998 and headed this NGO from 1990 to 2010, serving as president.

For this purpose, she has been working for several years on the systematization of the familiar vocabulary and collects, with the help of the few surviving speakers, new words, phrases, and place names from the area of their forcibly-displaced birthplace.

[2] The rationale for the joint award of Afanasyeva and Antonova was their leading role in the revitalization of the Kildin Sámi language as a teacher, politician, writer and translator.