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 and cultural adaptation, including diverse conservation, 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 nomadic traditional knowledge, language, literature, music and arts and crafts in sustaining cultural identity and community across the region. The forum considers how heritage practitioners, artists, and communities are negotiating questions of cultural preservation, migration, urbanisation, environmental and climate change in combination with 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, such traditional knowledge practices are also recognised within international efforts to safeguard intangible cultural heritage, including UNESCO frameworks concerned with cultural and natural diversity.

What to expect:

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

Mongolia Update is generously supported by the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, the Kharkhorin Heritage Foundation and the Embassy of Mongolia to Australia.

Program and other details are to be listed on the ANU Mongolia Institute website.

Contact the host of 2026 Mongolia Update: Cultural heritage in a changing world