MIASU Event

MIASU Seminar with Grégory Delaplace (University of Cambridge, MIASU) Weddings, funerals, and social critique in contemporary Northwestern Mongolia This paper looks back at a few weddings witnessed for over twenty years in the north-westernmost province of Uvs in Mongolia. Commenting on what appears to have changed and...

Translation as Slippage: Mediative Labour and Contested Hybridity at a Chinese Mine in Mongolia Ruiyi Zhu (University of Cambridge) Since the economic liberalisation in the 1990s, Mongolia has experienced a significant influx of Chinese investment and labour, which has been a source of social tension. In particular...

Uradyn Bulag & Odbayar Ganbaatar (University of Cambridge & MIASU Visiting Scholar) Khalkha Mongols and Kazakhs: Chinggisid Recognition and Anti-Dzungar Cooperation This presentation examines a relationship largely overlooked in Inner Asian historiography: the connections between Kazakh polities and Khalkha Mongols...

MIASU Seminar with Christian Luczanits (SOAS, London) Researching Monastery Collections in Mustang: Background, Procedures and Discoveries In this presentation, I will first introduce the background of my project, Tibetan Buddhist Monastery Collections Today, and provide an overview of its achievements since 2012. I then...

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...