Topic description and stories

The conservationist, the herders and the fashionistas

02 Dec 2020

Respect for the Mongolian landscape is engrained within her, says Onon Bayasgalan. Her work is helping herders in her home country to preserve...

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Buyankhishig criss-crossed the hillside before making offerings of vodka and milk. Then, beating her drum and chanting, she invited her ancestral spirits to enter her body.

Ailing bodies, angry mountains, healing spirits: shamanic healing in Mongolia

18 Jan 2019

Through sound and photography, Cambridge researcher Dr Elizabeth Turk shares her experiences of talking to shamanic healers in Mongolia. Over the...

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Archaeology shows there's more to millet than birdseed

24 Jul 2017

Archaeological research shows that our prehistoric ancestors built resilience into their food supply. Now archaeologists say ‘forgotten’ millet – a...

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Traffic in Ulaanbaator

Mongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation

27 Feb 2015

In two separate books, anthropologists Dr Franck Billé and Dr Christopher Kaplonski look at the identity of Mongolia, a country that stands at a...

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Life on the divide: the Buriad people and the world’s longest border

07 Apr 2013

A major project – Where Rising Powers Meet – looks at life along the border that separates Russia, China and Mongolia. Among the researchers involved...

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Chinese frontier guard at the Manzhouli-Zabaikalsk border

The life of borders: where China and Russia meet

06 Nov 2012

A new project based in Cambridge’s Division of Social Anthropology is looking at interactions between China, Mongolia and Russia at the point where...

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Robin Irvine at the shrine on top of Shilin Bogd

'Extreme Sleepover #12’ – an equestrian adventure on the Mongolian steppes

02 Jan 2012

In the latest report of the Extreme Sleepover series, undergraduate Robin Irvine explains how a fascination for the relationships between humans...

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Siberian timber being delivered to China

Where empires meet

17 Mar 2011

How two ‘rising powers’ – China and Russia – interact across the border they share with resource-rich Mongolia is the focus of a network led by the...

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