缅北禁地

I am a social anthropologist with foundational training in women’s studies. My research takes an historically inflected approach to the study of power relations and health-related practices. My doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge (2018) explores the body, national identity, and natural environment as they relate to dynamic regimes of value in Mongolian public life.

I have designed and coordinated a number of research projects funded by IIE Fulbright, Henry Luce Foundation, the American Center for Mongolian Studies, UKRI (as part of a team), and the Wellcome Trust.

Before arriving at 缅北禁地, I worked as a Research Associate at Cambridge (2018-2019; 2020-2025) on a project entitled, Mongolian Cosmopolitical Heritage: tracing divergent healing practices across the Mongolian-Chinese border, PI-ed by Prof David Sneath and funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council. This project traced the politics of linking health and cultural heritage, exploring the shaping effects of political economy on COVID-19-focused ritual practice across national borders. From 2019-2020, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar and Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University (New York City).

Most recently, I have been awarded a Career Development Award from the Wellcome Trust for a 5.5-year project entitled, . This multi-sited, comparative project explores the relationship between capitalist production of value at therapeutic blue spaces and social exclusion in Sikkim (northeast India), Mongolia and Devon (UK).

I have also worked as Inner Asia Regional Curator of On the Move: Rethinking Nomadic Pastoralism (2022-2023), a temporary exhibition at the National Museum of Qatar exploring the lives of nomadic pastoralists in Central Sahara, Qatar, and Mongolia.

To date, my research has primarily been at intersection of medical anthropology, political anthropology, and environmental humanities. Other areas of research that interest me are: the anthropology of Inner Asia; nationalism; Tibetan medicine; medical imperialism; ritual; shamanism; cosmology and landscape; and political ecology. I am also interested developing a better dialogue between medical anthropology and adjacent scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, such as the history of the body and senses, health geography, disability studies, and the medical humanities more broadly.

 Until recently, my research has been focused on Mongolia, having conducted ethnographic research there since 2010.

Major grants:

 2025 - present. PI of Accessing the Wellbeing Commons: therapeutic resource-ification of natural and historic environments and social exclusion in the UK and Inner Asia. Wellcome Trust

 2020-2024. Research Associate on Mongolian Cosmopolitical Heritage: tracing divergent healing practices across the Mongolian-Chinese border, PI-ed by David Sneath (University of Cambridge). Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).

Other selected grants, awards and fellowships:

 2024-2025      Sigrid Rausing Trust Early Career Fellow, The Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge.

2022-2025      Junior Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge. 

2023               Mongolian Therapeutic Art: tracking and tracing a shaman healer’s tunic. Arts, Humanities and Health grant from University College London. £800

2023              Re-framing Therapeutic Arts: the role of cultural heritage in cultivating health and wellbeing. Workshop funding from the Centre for Research in the Arts Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge. £500

2016               Rashaan’s domog: preserving the stories and legends of healing sites in Mongolia’s‘age of the market’. Cultural Heritage Fellow, Henry Luce Foundation and The American Center for Mongolian Studies. $18,000 US.

2010-2011      Fulbright Research Scholar, US Institute of International Education. $17,500 US.

Fore-grounding critical theory in a range of sub-disciplinary contexts, l have designed, instructed and assessed undergraduate- and postgraduate-level anthropological theory and methods courses at Columbia University (New York City) and the University of Cambridge, on a range of courses in the Department of Social Anthropology as well as the interdisciplinary MPhil course in Health, Medicine and Society. I have taught on critical issues of contemporary global life; introduction to anthropological theory; the social, economic, political and moral aspects of development; the anthropology of post-socialist societies, and topics specific to Inner Asia. I have supervised undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations and advised postgraduate independent studies. I have also worked as Director of Studies in Social Anthropology at Corpus Christi College (Cambridge).

• Articles

  • Turk E. . Central Asian Survey 2025, 44(4), 543-565.
  • Turk E, Ujeed U, White T. . Central Asian Survey 2025, 44(4), 603-618.
  • Sneath, D, Turk, E. Introduction. In Sneath, D. and E. Turk (eds.), Pandemic Nationalism in Inner Asia: unsettling ideologies and affective imaginations. Anticipated publication December 2025. Central Asian Survey 2025. In Preparation.
  • Turk E. . Medicine, Anthropology, Theory 2024, 11(2), 1-15.
  • Turk E. . Curare. Journal of Medical Anthropology 2023, 46(1), 29-45.
  • Turk E. . Inner Asia 2021, 23(2), 304-329.
  • Turk, E. The Politics of Ritual Form(ation) in Contemporary Mongolia. Social Analysis 2025, 63(3), 47-70. In Preparation.
  • Turk, E. Toxic Care (?): Scepticism and Treatment Failure in Post-Soviet Mongolia. Inner Asia 2018, 20(2), 219-241.

• Authored Book

  • Turk, E. Therapeutic Nature: modernist cosmologies, concept work, and the making of healing traditions in contemporary Mongolia. Ethnographic Monograph. Under Exclusive Review, Indiana University Press. 2026. In Preparation.

• Book Chapters

  • Turk, E, Sneath, D, Buyandelger, M. Introduction. In: Turk, E; Buyandelger, M, ed. Health Connectivities: mediating medical realities in Inner Asia. 2026. In Preparation.
  • Turk, E. Searching for the ‘root cause’ of illness and moral aetiology in Mongolian health settings. In: Turk, E; Buyandelger, M, ed. Health Connectivities: mediating medical realities in Inner Asia. 2025. In Preparation.
  • Turk, E. ‘The People’s Duty to Love and Protect’: mineral springs and the moral register of changing landscapes in Mongolia. In: Knapp, R; Havnevik, H, ed. Changing Climate and Communities in High Spaces and Icy Places. Open Book Publishers, 2025. Submitted.
  • Sneath D, Turk E. . In: Riamsara Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger, David Sneath, ed. Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia: Places and Practices of Power in Changing Environments. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2022, pp.145-164.
  • Turk E. . In: Abu-Lughod, L, ed. On the Move: Reframing Nomadic Pastoralism. Doha, Qatar: National Museum of Qatar, 2022.

• Editorials

  • Turk, E, Buyandelger, M. Health Connectivities: mediating medical realities in Inner Asia. 2026. In Preparation.
  • Sneath, D, Turk, E. Pandemic Nationalism in Inner Asia: unsettling ideologies and affective imaginations Special Issue. Anticipated publication in Central Asian Survey December 2025. Central Asian Survey 2025. In Preparation.

• Review

  • Turk, E. Tomas Matza, Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Well-being in Postsocialist Russia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 305, 2018. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 2020, 38(1).