Associate Professor Natasha Fijn is Director of the Australian National University’s Mongolia Institute. She has been awarded a mid-career Australian Research Council Future Fellowship to enable her to conduct ongoing research relating to 'A Multi-species Anthropological Approach to Influenza' (2022-2026) in Mongolia. She was previously part of an ARC Discovery team project on the transfer of Mongolian medicinal knowledge, while her specific focus was on prevention and healing by Mongolian herding families, including herd animals (2019-2023).

Natasha wrote a seminal multispecies ethnography based in Mongolia, 'Living with Herds: human-animal coexistence in Mongolia' (2011). She has co-edited several books and journal volumes, including three special issues oriented toward visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking, and three engaging with multispecies and sensory or visual anthropology. With Muhammad Kavesh she recently edited the book, 'Nurturing Alternative Futures: living with diversity in a more-than-human world' (2024).

Natasha is particularly interested in multispecies studies, including more-than-human sociality, concepts of domestication and mutualism, eco-health, natural-cultural heritage and conservation. She has conducted extensive field research in remote places, including the Khangai Mountains of Mongolia and Arnhem Land in northern Australia. She was also a founding committee member of Plumwood, an environmental humanities-oriented organisation acting as stewards for the biocultural heritage on Plumwood Mountain in New South Wales.

Six Example Publications:

1. Fijn, N. (2025) ‘The enduring presence of the Eucalyptus tree: a photo essay’ In Multispecies Ethnography and Artful Methods Petitt, A., Tonnaer, A., Servais, V., Notermans, C. and Fijn, N. The Whitehorse Press: https://www.meamresearch.com/ (Chapter contribution to an open access co-edited volume on anthropological methods).
2. Fijn, N. and Kavesh, M. A. (2020) 'A sensory approach for multispecies anthropology' The Australian Journal of Anthropology, http://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12379 (Introduction for an edited special issue on sensory and multispecies anthropology. GS citations: 56. One of TAJA’s top-cited articles within 2022).
3. Fijn, N. (2020) ‘Bloodletting in Mongolia: Three visual narratives’ In Fluid Matter(s): flow and transformation in the history of the body Kohle, N. & Kuriyama, S. Asian Studies Monograph Series 14, ANU Press, Canberra, doi.org/10.22459/FM.2020. (Includes text and photo essays, open access downloads 13,029 in under two years).
4. Fijn, N. (2018) ‘Dog Ears and Tails: different relational ways of being in Aboriginal Australia and Mongolia’ In: Domestication Gone Wild: politics and practices of multispecies relations. Swanson, H; Ween, G. & Lien, M. Eds. Duke University Press, Durham and London, pp. 72-93 (Google Scholar citation: 29, outcome of Arctic Domestication research fellowship, team project and workshop, Centre for Advanced Studies, Oslo).
5. Fijn, N. (2015, 58 mins) Yolngu Homeland, Ronin Films, Canberra. [Screened on NITV nationally in Australia, SBS on demand (2016-2017), distributed on Vimeo and CanopyStreaming. Independently researched, filmed, edited and produced].
6. Fijn, N. (2011) Living with Herds: Human-Animal Coexistence in Mongolia. Cambridge University Press, New York and Cambridge [includes nine integrated video segments. Has become classic multispecies ethnographic text, influential across disciplines regarding domestication in Inner Asia. Google Scholar: cited by 317].

Multispecies ethnography, visual anthropology, sensory anthropology, observational filmmaking, animal studies, environmental humanities, ecological anthropology, animal domestication, Mongolia, Inner Asia, Yolngu, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, biocultural heritage, Ethnoveterinary medicine, Mongolian healing