My methodological approach was initially to combine participant observation in the field (Inner Mongolia) together with written sources. However, my research has been heavily affected by the Covid pandemic and the shutdown of China’s borders for many years. I thus had to rethink my methodology to pursue my research without doing in situ fieldwork. I have decided to give priority to archival work (WP1) and to the treatment of data (WP3) already collected during previous fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2019. Furthermore, I have also integrated online research into my methodology, in particular the WeChat platform, an online Chinese sharing tool that I learnt to use as a digital foundation for conducting research on ritual practices.
During WPI, I compiled a literature review on the topic of religious and gender studies in the Mongolian cultural world and in northern Asia, worked on several primary written sources in Chinese and Mongolian (some of these sources were previously collected during fieldwork but not analyzed) related to the topic of religious sites, and examined photographs taken in the 1930s. This archival preliminary work was done in parallel to data treatment and online ethnography.
During WP4 (research part devoted to gender narratives) and WP5 (research part devoted to political hierarchy), I mainly worked towards the writing up and publication of my research. I published three articles in peer-reviewed journals and two chapters in edited volumes. During the two years of my Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship, I engaged in communication activities (WP6), mainly consisting in the presentation of my ongoing research during international conferences and workshops. I organized one international conference in Paris in 2020 and one panel at Chug-Ang University in Korea (online) in 2022. In 2021, I presented three papers during international conferences held at the Musuem d’histoire naturelle in Paris, the University of Tartu (online), and the Czech Academy of Sciences (online), as well as eight papers at workshops held in different universities and research centres in France. As part of my dissemination activities, I gave a class on the topic on the traditional Mongolian way of life in primary schools in 2020, participated in a radio programme, and presented at a consultative workshop for the United Nations on the topic of "Indigenous peoples and the right to freedom of religion or belief” in 2022. Finally, I also had the opportunity to teach two postgraduate courses (“Religions and Rituals in the Mongolian World”) at Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales and at the University of Paris in 2021 and 2022.
