Learning about Space, Scale, and People through the lens of Ethnography: The story of the Inner Mongolia Grassland
This talk is built upon my master’s thesis, which explores the Inner Mongolia grassland as a site through which to rethink the relationships between space, scale, and lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic approaches, my research considers how grassland is not only a physical environment, but also a social, political, and affective landscape shaped by mobility, policy, memory, and everyday practice. By tracing how local actors experience and negotiate broader forces, from ecological governance to rural transformation, I reflect on how ethnography allows us to connect intimate, ground-level realities with larger spatial and structural processes. In doing so, I hope to show how global narratives, national interventions, and local livelihoods intersect in complex and often uneven ways.
Date: 11 March 2026, 11:00
Venue: Dyson Perrins Building, off South Parks Road OX1 3QY
Venue Details: Diversity Room
Speaker: Stephanie Wang (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Environmental Change Institute
Organiser: Dr Avidesh Seenath (Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford)
Host: Dr Avidesh Seenath (Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford)
Part of: ECM Brown Bag Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Avidesh Seenath