Translingual History and Politics of 'Minzu' (Nationality) and ‘Zuqun’ (Ethnicity) in China’

This project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2013–2016) with Dr U Bulag Co-Partner with PI Prof. David Anderson, University of Aberdeen, in the International Network Grant project Etnos and Minzu: The Histories and Politics of Identity Governance in Eurasia.

The Network collected and interpreted the ‘life histories’ of the central Russian and Chinese concepts of etnos and minzu demonstrating the interrelation of these concepts and their ‘bridges’ to Euro-American concepts of nation and ethnicity.

In 2014–15 Dr Bulag raised £35,000 from Inner Mongolia University and the Hulunbuir Museum of Ethnic Minorities for

digitizing about 10,000 photos from Ethel Lindgren's collections at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. The digitized photos with their catalogue details have been donated to six community and university museums in China. The sub-project has helped fund research visits to Inner Mongolia made by Dr Jocelyne Dudding (MAA) Dr Richard Fraser (MIASU) and Dr Vladimir Davydov (Kunstkamera, St Petersburg). The team has collaborated on organising three exhibitions: two in China (September 2014 and September 2015, Inner Mongolia University), and one at Cambridge (June-September 2015). A new collection relevant to this has been found at Lucy Cavendish College and work is under way to explore.

A new collection of Lindgren's unpublished manuscripts and notes relevant to this has been found at Lucy Cavendish College and work is under way to explore their value in establishing Lindgren as the first western anthropologist studying Mongolia and the Mongols.