Natasha Fijn

Associate Professor Natasha Fijn serves as Director of the ANU Mongolia Institute and holds an ARC Future Fellowship (2022-2026) for her research on 'A Multi-species Anthropological Approach to Influenza'. She is a leading multispecies ethnographer with extensive field experience in Mongolia's Khangai Mountains and Australia's Arnhem Land.

• PhD Anthropology (ANU, 2008)
• PG Dip Natural History Film and Communication (Otago)
• MSc Ethology (hons)
• BSc Zoology and Ecology (Canterbury)

Her research pioneers multispecies ethnography through visual and sensory methodologies, examining human-animal coexistence in nomadic pastoral systems. She documents traditional medical knowledge across species in Mongolia, including ethnoveterinary practices and Mongolian medicine's integration of Buddhist, shamanic, and nomadic traditions. Her work reveals how herders utilize medicinal plants like yagui to maintain herd health through ecological mutualism.

Fijn's filmography—including 'Two Seasons: multispecies medicine in Mongolia' (2020) and 'Yolngu Homeland' (2015)—demonstrates how ethnographic filmmaking preserves dynamic knowledge systems. Her publications reveal trends in biocultural heritage conservation, zoonotic disease transmission, and sensory approaches to multispecies relations, particularly regarding influenza ecology across human-animal interfaces.

Major awards:

• ARC Future Fellowship (2022-2026)
• Wenner-Gren Fejos Fellowship (2017)
• ANU Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011-2014)

Fijn leads the ARC Discovery Project 'Mongolian Medicine: different modes of multispecies knowledge transmission' (2019-2025) while directing the Mongolia Institute. Her collaborative approach bridges Mongolian herders, scientists, and policymakers to document traditional knowledge threatened by mining expansion and climate change. She co-founded the Plumwood conservation organization to steward biocultural heritage on Plumwood Mountain, NSW.

Her field-based research examines how dzud weather events and mining encroachment impact pastoral lifeways, while her filmmaking preserves rapidly changing nomadic practices. Current work investigates how climate change disrupts seasonal medicinal plant cycles crucial for herd health.