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ACMS Speaker Series

Speaker Series Audience

The ACMS Speakers Series is an on-going series of lectures presented by Mongolian and visiting international academics to the public. The Speaker Series began in the Fall of 2004, and it has grown to include an average of 12 lectures per academic year.

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.

Juha Janhunen, Ph.D., Professor, East Asian Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland

On Romanizing Mongolian

August 5, 2010, 5.30PM; Room 305, Building No. 5, NUM

Professor Janhunen will present his linguistic research on the BJR (Balk-Janhunen Romanization System) for written Mongolian. He will begin by briefly describing the principles of romanizing cyrillic Khalkha, then discuss the prospects of creating a Roman-based practical orthography for Mongolian. He has previously published papers on these topics and will partly be referring to them, adding some new ideas.
He has authored more than 265 academic publications including Manchuria: An Ethnic History; Siberian Shamanistic Terminology; From Manchuria to Amdo Qinghai: On the Ethnic Implications of the Tuyuhun Migration; Typological Interaction in the Qinghai Linguistic Complex; Mongolic as an Expansive Language Family ; On the Romanization of Phags.pa Mongol ; Reconstructing the Language Map of Prehistorical Northeast Asia; On the position of Khamnigan Mongol
The languages of his publications include: English, French, German, Swedish, Russian, Finnish, Hungarian, Saami, Kirghiz, Khakas, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Link: Full Publication List

Professor Janhunen, a distinguished linguist, has served as Chair of Finno-Ugrian Studies, University of Oslo; Senior Research Fellow, Academy of Finland, Helsinki; Visiting Fellow in various institutions in Osaka, Sapporo and Tokyo; Honorary Professor, Inner Mongolia University; and as a Member of Academia Europaea, London, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki, Finnish Association of East Asian Studies, Royal Asiatic Society, London, Finnish Oriental Society, Helsinki, and the Finno-Ugrian Society, Helsinki. He has conducted extensive field research in Gansu, Qinghai, Manchuria, and Hokkaido and has been conducting research in Mongolia since 1976.

Link: Full CV

Past Speaker Series Lecturers

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.

John Waldman, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Biology, Queens College, City University of New York

Launching a Conservation Genetics Study of Mongolian Taimen

May 20, 2010, 5PM; Room 407, Building No. 5, NUM

Modern molecular techniques allow for powerful analyses of the demographics of fishes. Dr. Waldman and his colleagues are attempting to launch a multi-year study of the population structure, effective population sizes, and zoogeographic relationships of taimen in Mongolia. Such information will be useful to managers of these now popular and economically important recreational fishes. Possible additions to the study include analyses of co-occurring lenok and grayling; analyses of life history through niche modeling; and the inclusion of a summer student field research program. Relevant information and potential partners are being sought at this time.

Professor Waldman is Professor of Biology, Queens College, City University of New York and holds academic affiliations at the American Museum of Natural History, Long Island University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His current research interests include the historical ecology and conservation biology of anadromous fishes; environmental history and management of urban waterways; mitochondrial and nuclear DNA diversity in anadromous fishes; life history, population biology and stock identification of selected Atlantic fish populations.

Rick Taupier, Ph.D. Associate Director of Research Development, University of Massachusetts Amherst

A Comparison of the Mongol and Oirat Empires and the Later Adoption of Buddhism in Mongolia and Oiratia

May 6th, 2010 5pm, Lecture Hall 407, Building No.5 NUM

The Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan and his heirs differed in many respects from the later Oirat/Zunghar Empire that rose briefly in the 17th Century. This paper considers six points of comparison as a means to generate further discussion on this theme. The latter half of the paper compares the Mongol and Oirat adoptions of Buddhism in the 17th Century and the extent to which those varying approaches served to cause divisions between them.

Rick Taupier, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Research Development at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is an Adjunct Professor of Regional Planning whose teaching and research concern issues of environmental and cultural sustainability. Rick is also a scholar in Central Asian history and a Ph.D. candidate in history, concentrating primarily on Mongolia, Oiratia and Tibet. He is president of the Manjushri Institute of Buddhist Studies, dedicated to preservation of and education in the Central Asian Mahayana Buddhist Traditions of Tibet and Mongolia.

Erdenebold Lkhagvasuren, Ph.D., Senior faculty member, School of Social Technology, MUST

Research on the Burial Customs of Ancient Uighur Royals

April 22nd, 2010 5pm, Lecture Hall 407, Building No.5 NUM

Erdenebold Lkhagvasuren

The Mongolian Archaeological Project discovered over 40 squares sites (Durvuljin) in Khotont sum, Arkhangai province, Central Mongolia in 2006-2008, and has excavated 5 of them, so far. In the process of excavation the square sites were determined to be ritual complexes and tombs of the Uighur period (744-840). Evidence that led the research group to propose that the square sites belong to the Uighur people and that they might be connected to the elite people will be presented. This kind of site, while previously known and noted, has never before been investigated in Mongolia. This work can serve as a model for new avenues of investigating the ancient Uighur people, their nobility, ritual ceremonies and ideologies about the dead.

Erdenebold Lkhagvasuren, Ph.D., is currently a senior faculty member in the School of Social Technology at MUST. He received his Ph.D. from the Russian National Academy of Science in History Mongolian, Tibetan and Buddhism Studies. His dissertation work was on the topic of “Oirat Mongolians’ Religious Heritage in the 19th – 20th Centuries” Currently his research interests from on Tradition of the Mongolian culture and religious tradition and ancient nomadic sites.

The lecture will be held in Mongolian, with English translation.

Amy LaCross, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona

Speech Perception in Khalkha Mongolian: A Psycholinguistic Survey

April 1st, 2010 5pm, Lecture Hall 407, Building No.5 NUM

Amy LaCross

Amy LaCross will present the results of her most recent Mongolian psycholinguistic experiment, which identifies, for the first time, an effect of word frequency in Mongolian word perception. This experiment is part of her larger research project which explores how regularity within language may affect the ways in which language speakers perceive and mentally process language. In addition, a brief overview of the field of psycholinguistics and its relevance to Mongolian studies will be included.

Amy LaCross is a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department at the University of Arizona. She is currently a Fellow of the American Center for Mongolian Studies and is in Mongolia to conduct fieldwork for her dissertation. Her research focuses on phonology and sycholinguistics, with a particular focus on vowel harmonic languages, speech perception and lexical organization.

Catherine Kmita, Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology Department, University of Alberta

The Inner Mongolian Dance, Andai, as Dance Therapy

March 25th, 2010, 5pm, Lecture Hall 407, Building No.5 NUM

Catherine Kmita

Mongolian shamanism deals to a great extent with healing and the fixing of community ills or personal wrongs as well as the relationship of humankind to the natural world and its spirits. Drumming, playing the aman khuur, singing, and dancing may be part of a ritual or a healing session. The Inner Mongolian dance, andai, is a dance derived from shamanism, which began as a method of treating a "heavy disease" among young women. Dance therapy consists of fairly recent western therapies which use dance and movement for healing purposes. Dance therapy also incorporates recent scientific knowledge about the brain and its role in healing, which may have some usefulness in describing what happens in andai. Some approaches to dance therapy also look at the spiritual aspects of dance and healing and this is another area where it and Mongolian shamanic dance may intersect. In this paper, I will examine the dance andai in terms of its connection to dance therapy to discover what properties may contribute to its effectiveness in healing.

Catherine Kmita is an ACMS Research Fellow and doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the University of Alberta. Her Master’s research combined Dance, Anthropology, and Asian Studies, to explore the Inner Mongolian dance, andai, through the lens of shamanic dance. Now she is looking at therapeutic aspects of shamanic dance in Buryatia, Mongolia, and Inner Mongolia by focusing on political interactions, the dance community, religious practices, and medical practices.

Saskia Anderson, PhD candidate, Anthropology Department, University of Western Australia

Interdependent Co-arising: Contemporary Ideas of Buddhism in Ulaanbaatar

MARCH 4, 2010, 5PM ROOM 305, BUILDING NO. 5 NUM

Saskia Anderson

Religious communities have always been shaped and influenced by others. Tibetan Buddhism was forged out of a marriage between Buddhism and the native Bön religion of Tibet. Mongolian Buddhism, similarly, is not recomposing itself in a vacuum. For the last 12 months Saskia has been doing fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar talking to Mongolians who identify as Buddhists about their religious beliefs and practices. What she has found is that for most Mongolians, Buddhism is a religious bricolage created from a combination of old knowledge passed down from their forebears, influences from other religions such Christianity and Shamanism, and new ideas about spirituality from groups such as Sri Sri and the Supreme Master Ching Hai. This talk will examine the global and internal forces shaping conceptions and performances of Buddhism in Ulaanbaatar. It will discuss how gaps in knowledge and understanding are being filled by proximate ideas and ritual forms.

Saskia Anderson is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department of the University of Western Australia. She is currently finishing up her anthropological fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar where she has been researching Buddhism for the last 12 months. Her academic interests include religion, psychology, rationality, evolutionary theory, globalisation and environmentalism.

Gaby Bamana, PhD Candidate, University of Wales, Lampeter

Mongolian tea culture

February 25th, 2010 5pm Room 305, Building No.5 NUM

Gaby Bamana

Mr. Gaby Bamana will briefly describe the Mongolia tea culture and its connection to the household. Although Mongolia does not grow tea because of the climate, the country has developed a culture of tea drinking. However tea drinking in Mongolia is not a casual fact. Gaby will explain how tea drinking encompasses patterns of domestic relations and how tea rituals are a codification of the Mongolian social life and especially of the gender relations within the household. He will use a case to illustrate how tea becomes a major symbol in the negotiation of social breaches. His main argument is that the Mongolian tea culture is a symbol of Mongolian social life and that changes in the tea culture are a valid gauge of social changes.

Gaby is a Congo (Democratic Republic) national and has been living and working in Mongolia for about 10 years. His first research position was with the Antoon Mostaert Center before he started his Ph.D program at the University of Wales, Lampeter. At the same time Gaby was recruited as researcher at the National University of Mongolia, Center for the Study of Nomadic Culture and Civilization. In 2008, he wrote a book called "On the Tea Road".

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