Mongolian Digital Ethnography Archive

Welcome!

This site presents a digital archive of ethnographic materials related to Mongolia and surrounding areas of Inner Asia.

Our focus area includes Mongolia itself, Inner Mongolia, the Buryat and Kalmyk areas of Russia, and ethnically Mongolian areas of Xinjiang and Kirghizstan.

By presenting material evidence from ethnographic field research, our overall goal is to highlight the value of anthropological knowledge, methods, and perspectives to the general public, both “at home” and in the places in which we work.

Collections

In the first phase of our current project, we have been collecting, digitizing, annotating, and uploading a selection of items that reflect current and past ethnographic research in Inner Asia.

Currently there are more than 800 items in the archive, with many more to come.

We aim to include a wide variety of ethnographic resources related to Mongolia and Inner Asia: photographs, audiovisual recordings, field notes, maps, archived web pages, and interview transcripts.

These items are taken partly from the archives of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and partly from the collections of individual contributors.

You can explore the public items from the Collections index, also accessible from the link in the main navigation menu.

Public Anthropology Exhibits

Building on the items included in this archive, we have been developing a series of online exhibits that highlight the methods, processes, tools, and outcomes of ethnographic research in Inner Asia.

These short essays and annotated item sets draw directly on the archived ethnographic resources, placing them into the context of broader research within our field.

By following the trajectory of research through the stages of planning, fieldwork, analysis, and dissemination, we hope to open up our discipline to the general public.

We have created an orienting list of twenty things to learn from ethnographic research in Mongolia & Inner Asia, which will be updated to include links to new exhibit pages as they are published over the coming months.

Videos

As part of our public anthropology series, we are preparing a series of short video interview clips with anthropologists who currently work in Mongolian regions of Inner Asia.

Links to these clips will be posted as they become available.

Sponsors and collaborators

This project was initiated with support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and created with the participation of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge.

The project is being undertaken by Dr Eric Thrift (University of Winnipeg) with the help of colleagues from Mongolia and worldwide.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge