MIASU Event

Jenny Tang, Sigrid Rausing MIASU Doctoral Student in the Social Anthropology of Inner Asia, University of Cambridge ‘Mongolian time or German time?’: Rethinking the ‘nomadic’ through an art residency This Lunchtime Seminar explores the ideas of time and nomadism ethnographically through my doctoral fieldwork conducted with...

The fate of transboundary river ecosystems in times of conflict and cooperation Local communities, indigenous people and humans in general are dependent on healthy river ecosystems, which are becoming a scarce resource. Sizeable free-flowing rivers have been reduced by two thirds globally, mainly due to dam building for...

Moveable Boundary: Governing methods in Mongolian Nomadic Society during the Qing Period This study aims to provide a fresh perspective on the delineation of boundary in Qing-era Mongolia, revising the conventional understanding. Previous studies have demonstrated that in Khalkha Mongolia, the boundaries of leagues were...

What exactly was ancient Zhangzhung in far western Tibet? Variously called a state, empire, civilization, and the foundation of an indigenous Tibetan identity, Zhangzhung remains poorly understood despite more than two decades of systematic archaeological research. In this presentation, I will offer a reconstruction of the...

Figures of their time: what ‘convict officers’ in a rural district prison can tell us about state-making in Nepal More details are available: https://www.miasu.socanth.cam.ac.uk please email if you would like a Zoom link

Onon Prize lecture with Professor Manduhai Buyandelger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Crisis in Animal Rescue: Rethinking Urbanization in a Multispecies World All animals are sentient beings, Mongolian Buddhism teaches, and humans are believed to have been dogs in their past lives. Yet the unregulated breeding...

Angel Naydenov (MIASU, University of Cambridge) Homo Rhythmicus: Searching for a Sense of Existence in Sichuan, China This paper demonstrates that the symbolic affirmation of existence takes a rhythmic form. Whether set in motion through abstract comparison and its progressive linearity or through the immediacy of play and...

Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz (University of Bern) Essentializing the Other: The encounter of Tibetan Buddhists with böge and udaγan in 17th and 18th century Mongolia Please note this talk is online only. Please email miasu-admin@socanth.cam.ac.uk for the zoom link The implementation of Tibetan Buddhism in the Mongolian regions...

Morris Rossabi (Columbia University & Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge) Post-Communist Transition in Mongolia Almost thirty-five years have elapsed since what some advocates have labeled the "Transition" in Mongolia. They imply that the problems the country has faced will wither away once the "...

From Lamaism to Buddhism: The Rise of Modernity in the Mongolian Sangha of Russia, late 19th – early 20th c. It is generally accepted that the early history of Buddhist modernism is largely connected with the regions of Asia that experienced prolonged European colonization (Ceylon) or earlier than others embarked on the...