The program and speaker details will be available soon. For now, please save the date!
2026 Mongolia Update: Cultural heritage in a changing world
A bi-annual public forum connecting Australia with contemporary cultural developments across the Mongolian Plateau.
Across the Mongolian Plateau, cultural traditions shaped by nomadic mobility, ecological adaptation, and diverse religious, linguistic, and literary practices have evolved over centuries. Today, these traditions continue to adapt in response to rapid social, economic, and environmental change across Inner Asia.
This year’s Mongolia Update explores the role of traditional knowledge, language, literature, music and craftsmanship in sustaining cultural identity and community life across the region. The forum considers how heritage practitioners, artists, and communities are negotiating questions of cultural preservation, migration, urbanisation, environmental change, and globalisation in the twenty-first century.
Far from being static remnants of the past, the cultural traditions of the Mongolian Plateau remain dynamic expressions of historical memory, social continuity, and regional identity. Increasingly, these practices are also recognised within international efforts to safeguard intangible cultural heritage, including UNESCO frameworks concerned with cultural diversity and traditional knowledge.
What to expect:
- The Australian National University's Mongolian ger set up on campus
- Expert panel on Mongolian cultural heritage insights into Mongolian social, cultural and economic transformation
- Live throat singing and morin khuur performances
- Q&A with diplomats, scholars and cultural practitioners
- Book launch of Mongolian Healing: knowledge, transmission and practice across Inner Asia by Li Narangoa, Natasha Fijn and Benedikte V Lindskog
- Film screening
Image supplied by Li Narangoa.