Speaker Series Audience

Speaker Series lectures are generally given from 5 pm to 6 pm on Thursday evenings on the campus of the National University of Mongolia. The lectures are 40-50 minutes in length, with an opportunity for audience members to ask questions. From 6 pm to 7 pm audience members are invited to the ACMS reading room for refreshments and an opportunity for further discussion.

The ACMS invites researchers and scholars to present public lectures at the ACMS Speaker Series on a rolling basis. If you are planning to visit Mongolia between late August and early July to conduct research or study, please contact info@mongoliacenter.org to schedule a date to present. The lectures must be conducted in English, and all academic disciplines are welcome. The Speaker Series is a great opportunity for scholars to present their work and for the general public to learn about academic research in Mongolia. Please notify the ACMS at least two weeks prior to your proposed date to speak in order to allow enough time to advertise the lecture.

The American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS) invites researchers and scholars to present public lectures during the ACMS Spring 2010 Speaker Series. If you are planning to visit Mongolia between February and June 2010 to conduct research or study, please contact info@mongoliacenter.org to schedule a date to participate in this public lecture series. The lectures must be conducted in English, and all academic disciplines are welcome. The Speaker Series is a great opportunity for scholars to present their work and for the general public to learn about academic research in Mongolia. Please notify the ACMS at least two weeks prior to your proposed date to speak in order to allow enough time to advertise the lecture.

Below is a list of all previous Speaker Series lecturers since 2004. The list is preseneted in chronological order beginning with the most recent lecture from the previous season. 

Transition and New Public Management in Mongolia: A Comparative Perspective

December 17th, 5pm Room 305, Building No.5 NUM

David Hausman

David Hausman is a Research Specialist at the Institution for Fragile States Initiative, a joint program of the Woodrow Wilson School and Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University. He received his degree from Harvard University. He traveled to Vietnam and the Solomon Islands to conduct semi-structured recorded interviews with key actors in recent civil service reform efforts. The results of his comparative research will be included in a forthcoming book on governance traps.

Chasing the Singers: Transition of the Mongolian Long-Song (Urtiin-Duu) in Post-Socialist Mongolia

December 10th, 2009, 5pm Room 305, Building No. 5 NUM

Sunmin Yoon

The name “long-song” is derived not from the length of the song, but by an elongating of vowels in the lyrics, resulting in a variety of musical ornamentations. As everyday music, it accompanied pastoral Mongolians as they herded and traveled along the lonesome roads. During the socialist regime however, this genre was diminished through selective governmental promotion. When the socialist government ultimately collapsed in 1990, this genre became newly “imagined” and accepted as a “new national symbol” for the country to utilize in seeking a new national, collective identity. Subsequently, numerous individual musicians in Ulaanbaatar and the countryside have responded in various ways to this genre. This presentation will illustrate the music and stories of long-song singers of various backgrounds and lives, providing a rare case study of these changes.

Sunmin Yoon is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is in Mongolia from 2009-2010 on an Anne Wylie dissertation Fellowship to conduct interviews and collect data from the countryside for her dissertation research, which is the topic of this seminar. She is a performing artist as well as a researcher and instructor at her university.

Khamnigan: Documenting and Describing the Endangered Language of a Northern Mongolic People

December 3rd, 2009, 5pm Room 305, Building No. 5 NUM

Andrew Shimunek

This talk aims to present some results from recent fieldwork undertaken in northern Khentii and Selenge, discussing, among other things, the geographic distribution of Khamnigan-speaking communities in Mongolia, lexical and morphological innovation in Khamnigan Mongol, conservative phonological characteristics aligning the language with Middle Mongol, Tungusic substratal elements in its lexicon, the internal dialectal diversity of Khamnigan Mongol, an attempt to devise a practical Cyrillic orthography for writing this previously unwritten language, and a treatment of what little is known about the recently extinct Yöröö Khamnigan language of Selenge.

Andrew Shimunek is a Fulbright Fellow in Mongolia, conducting fieldwork on the Khamnigan Mongol language. He holds a dual M.A. in Linguistics and Mongolian Studies (Indiana University, 2007), and is currently pursuing a dual Ph.D. in Linguistics and Mongolian Studies at Indiana University. His academic interests lie in linguistic fieldwork, historical linguistics, Mongolic, Tungusic, Sinitic, and Turkic languages, as well as Chinese language pedagogy.

The Oirat Gegen Zaya Pandita: Reflections on Buddhism Among the Mongols

November 12th, 2009, 5pm Room 305, Building No. 5 NUM

Dr. Richard P. Taupier

Richard Taupier is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass, Amherst). Previously, he received a Ph.D. from the UMass Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning Department where he is currently an Adjunct Graduate Faculty Member. Dr. Taupier also works as Associate Director for International Research, Research Liaison and Developing at UMass, Amherst.

Intimate Partner Violence, Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV/STI Risks among Women Engaged in Sex Work in Mongolia

November 5th, 2009, 5pm Room 305, Building No. 5 NUM

Dr. Susan Witte and Dr. B. Altantsetseg

Susan Witte, Associate Professor, Columbia University School of Social Work, develops and tests prevention and treatment interventions for vulnerable populations in which HIV/AIDS risk behaviors, substance abuse and interpersonal violence co-occur. Dr. Witte is principal investigator on studies funded by several branches of the US Federal government (NIMH, NIAA, CDC). Her work has been published in social work and public health peer reviewed journals.

Altantsetseg Batsukh, a graduate of Columbia University’s School of Social work, is responsible for overseeing the implementation of this project in Mongolia. Dr. Altantsetseg, who has served as the Executive Director of the National AIDS Foundation in Mongolia, works on community-based HIV/AIDS prevention programs that focus on high risk populations, develops curricula for social work schools at major Mongolian universities and teaches on the subject. Dr. Altantsetseg is currently working on the Third Health Sector Development Program at the Ministry of Health in Mongolia.

Spatial and Temporal Variability: Implications for Land Tenure in the Gobi Desert

October 22, 2009, 5pm Room 305, Building No. 5 NUM

Jane Addison

In this lecture, speaker outline the land tenure history of the Gobi Desert, and describe the increasingly disparate management systems of the Gobi’s Inner Mongolia and Omnogobi regions. She argues that any change in land tenure throughout the region that doesn’t consider biogeographical variability may be risky for long-term rangeland conditions and herder livelihoods.

Jane Addison is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Australia. She became interested in land tenure issues while working at the Mongolian Institute of Geoecology in 2007-2008. Her dissertation explores relationships between land tenure arrangements, rangeland condition and herder livelihoods in the Gobi Desert, primarily through understanding the spatial and temporal variability of the forage resource. She is currently based in Ulaanbaatar with MercyCorps, Mongolia’s Gobi Forage project, which provides an early warning system to herders at risk of droughts or dzuds.

Reindeer Nomads of the Hovsgol Taiga

October 15, 2009, 5pm Room 305, Building No. 5 NUM

Dr. Hamid Sardar-Afkhami

Hamid Sardar-Afkhami earned his Ph.D. degree at Harvard University in Sanskrit & Tibetan Studies. He worked as the School for International Training’s College Semester Abroad program in Nepal (1999-2000) and was the program’s founding director in Mongolia (2000-2003). In Mongolia, he also became the coordinator for the British Library’s Endangered Archives Project, helping to identify and digitally archive a cache of rare Buddhist manuscripts recently unearthed in the Gobi desert in Mongolia.