Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia

Project start date: 2007-07

Project end date: 2012-06

The Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia is a co-operative research project between the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge, and the International Association for Mongol Studies in Ulaanbaatar. The project has two goals: to increase knowledge of how people’s contexts affect understandings of events and history and to construct an on-line database in Mongolian and English of the oral history of Mongolia. We seek to increase our understanding of the relationship between memory, history and people’s political, cultural, social and economic contexts. Such contexts affect how people remember and understand events, ideas and beliefs. By interviewing hundreds of Mongolians from all walks of life about events and periods in the 20th century, we will construct a picture of how people’s contexts shape – and are shaped by - memory and understanding. To analyze the data, we will create an on-line database eventually containing over 600 interviews, with transcriptions in Mongolian, English translations, audio clips and supporting documents. It will be a record of Mongolia’s twentieth century history and also a portrait of everyday life, customs, and culture. The database will be a freely and publicly available knowledge bank not only for researchers, but for anyone interested in Mongolian culture, history, politics and society.