ANU Mongolia Institute Seminar Series 2023
The ANU Mongolia Institute hosts an interdisciplinary series of presentations on Mongolia. Held monthly on a Friday starting at noon mostly, the sessions will typically include a 45 minute presentation of recent research or fieldwork on a topic related to Mongolia or the Mongolian diaspora, followed by an opportunity to chat and get caught up on what we’re all doing.
Most presentations will be fairly informal, and may include work-in-progress overviews or discussions of recent Mongolia-related conference highlights. Feel free to forward session announcements to other people who may be interested.
Healing waters in Mongolia
With a specific attention to water and its capacity for healing of human ailments as well as being a source for enhancing wellbeing, balance and vitality, this seminar will examine the role of water in therapeutic contexts in Mongolia, emphasising the curative and preventive qualities water holds for people. The Mongolian land, its waters, mountains, fauna and flora encompass what can be thought of as a ‘therapeutic landscape’ and are by many Mongolians considered as pivotal to their physical, mental- and emotional health. This seminar will discuss how water relates to healing of imbalances in body/mind and how these healing processes also embody and solidify distinct aspects of being from, and living in, a homeland (nutag). These aspects shape the relation between personhood and the nutag, of becoming and being part of the ‘one homeland-people’ (neg nutgiinhan) and its land and waters (uul-us).
About the speaker
Benedikte V. Lindskog is an Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at the Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy at Oslo Metropolitan University and senior researcher in three externally funded projects: The MiPreg Study – closing the gap in maternity care to migrant women in Oslo; The PRESHA study - PREventing Severe Hypertensive Adverse events in pregnancy and childbirth; and the ARC-project Mongolian Medicine: Different modes of multispecies knowledge transmission.
Her most recent publications on Mongolia include: ‘Managing Uncertainty, Beckoning Security: Ritual Offerings to a Local Ovoo in Mongolia’, Ethnos (2019); Fjeld, H. & B. V. Lindskog. ‘The Principle of Separation: Human and Non-human Relations in Tibet and Mongolia’, in Humans Enmeshed: The Human Condition in Extended Socialities, Remme & Sillander (eds.), Cambridge University Press (2017); ‘Ritualised offerings to ovoos among nomadic Halh herders of west-central Mongolia’, Études Mongoles & Sibériennes, Centrasiatiques & Tibétaines, EMSCAT (2016).
In-person seminar in the Mongolia Room will be followed by an afternoon tea