Hedwig Waters
Hedwig Waters
QUALIFICATIONS
2019 Ph.D., Social Anthropology, University College London
2014 M.A., Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
2009 B.A., Anthropology, George Washington University
PRINCIPAL RESEARCH INTERESTS
Medicinal Plants; Plant Metabolism and World-Making; Environmental, Political & Economic Anthropology; Science & Technology Studies; Il/legal and Moral Economies; Asian Medical Industries; Post-Socialism; Mongolia, Central & Inner Asia
RESEARCH PROFILE
My research investigates political-economic and cosmological dynamics in the medicinal plant trade in Mongolia, particularly as they relate to globalized Asian medical industries. This interest emerged from my PhD fieldwork, during which I encountered the illegal wild harvesting and export of fang feng (Saposhnikovia divaricata) from Mongolia to China for the Traditional Chinese Medicine market. My postdoctoral research expanded this focus by examining the formalization and scientization of industries in Mongolia supplying Asian medical markets with vital medicinal plants—most notably, the COVID-19 remedies of fang feng and Asian licorice (Glycyrrhiza uralensis). This work highlights the crucial role played by plant metabolism and its markers in shaping both industrial scientization and the sourcing of wild-harvested plants across Asia.
In addition, I have substantial experience researching the moral economies of resource extraction and the wildlife trade in Mongolia. My first monograph discusses the political-economic lives of rural Mongolians in the post-socialist ruins of an agricultural cooperative along the Chinese border. It traces how they have become dependent on the illegal wildlife trade to service their accruing microfinance and bank debts, and how this economic precarity was accompanied by new cosmological frameworks. This analysis appears in Moral Economic Transitions in the Mongolian Borderlands: A proportional share (UCL Press, 2023).
I also maintain an ongoing interest in the nexus of gender and political economy in Mongolia, based on earlier fieldwork on beauty image standards and cosmetic surgeries.
Books
2023 Moral Economic Transitions in the Mongolian Borderlands: A proportional share. UCL Press.
Journal Articles
2025 Aspirational laws: performative governance in Mongolia’s fang feng (Saposhnikovia divaricata) trade for the TCM market. Frontiers in Human Dynamics 7: 1–13.
2022 Building Merit: The Moral Economy of the Illegal Wildlife Trade in Rural, Post-Socialist Eastern Mongolia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 64(2): 422–445.
2018 The financialization of help: moneylenders as economic translators in the debt-based economy. Central Asian Survey 37(3): 403–418.
2016 Erotic capital as societal elevator: pursuing feminine attractiveness in the contemporary Mongolian global(ising) economy. Sociologus 66(1): 25–52.
2012 Globalizing Beauty on the Gobi Desert. Anthropology Now 4(2012): 67–74.
Book Reviews
2025 A Thousand Steps to Parliament: Constructing Electable Women in Mongolia, written by Manduhai Buyandelger. PoLar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review.
2023 Urban Hunters: Dealing and Dreaming in Times of Transition, written by Lars Højer & Morten Axel Pedersen. Inner Asia 25(2): 364-366.
Past Projects and Grants
2023–2025 PLANTECON: The sociocultural formation of prices in Mongolian medicinal plant supply chains. European Research Area Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA ERA), Horizon Europe (Grant ID: 101090330). Fellow.
2014–2019 Emerging Subjects of the New Economy: Tracing Economic Growth in Mongolia. Consolidator Grant, European Research Council (Grant ID: 615785). PhD candidate.
2011–2012 Fulbright Research Scholar to Mongolia.
External Reviewing
Project Evaluation: OeAD – Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation.
Journal Articles Manuscript Review: Central Asian Survey; Economy and Society; Inner Asia; Political and Legal Anthropology Review; Cogent Humanities; Asian Journal of Women’s Studies.
Invited Talks, Public Lectures or Roundtables
2025 January, 1. Book discussion roundtable. Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit Lecture Series, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom (co-conveners Fox, Liz and White, Thomas)
2024 June, 22. Paper on “The illegal wild harvesting of fang feng from Mongolia for the TCM industry”. Joint conference for the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine and the Asian Society for the History of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
2023 December, 11. Public lecture on “The moral economy of the informal medicinal plant trade in Mongolia’s eastern borderlands”. Anthropology Department, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
2023 June, 23. Paper on “A politics of common wealth in the Mongolian medicinal plant trade”. UNESCO conference Nomadic Ethics and Intercultural Dialogue, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
2023 May, 4. Public lecture on “Moral economic dichotomies in the Mongolian borderlands”. ISA International Guest Lecture, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
2022 February, 8. Public lecture on “A proportional share: the political aesthetics of resource wealth amongst the wildlife procurers of remote post-socialist Mongolia”, Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit Lecture Series, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom
2022 November, 20. Public lecture “The interrelation of bank debt and the informal wildlife trade in rural Eastern Mongolia”. Speaker Series, The American Center for Mongolian Studies, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
2021 February, 8. Public online lecture on “Debt and the Wildlife Trade in the Mongolian borderlands”, International Institute of Asian Studies Lecture Series, Leiden University, Netherlands
Workshop Organisation
2019 November, 7. Reactive Responses to Extractive Practices in Central Asia. Workshop, UCL Anthropology, UK (co-organisers Botoeva, Gulzat and Özcan, Gül Berna)
Public Outreach & Online Essays
2024 Podcast on “Mongol dah’ уos surtahuuny ediin zasgiin tuhai [On the Mongolian Moral Economy]” with the Rock n Rollers podcast
2024 Book Interview on “Moral economic transitions in the Mongolian borderlands” on the New Books Network
2023 Book Interview on “Moral economic transitions with Hedwig Waters” on The Channel, Season 2, Episode 4 based at the International Institute of Asian Studies
2022 Article “Collateralising Mongolia’s Wildlife”. IIAS Newsletter 92.
2017 “Revisiting History: Debt and Protest during the Manchu Period”. UCL Emerging Subjects Blog.
2016 “The ‘Slow Violence” of Inaction: On the Apathy towards Air Pollution”. UCL Emerging Subjects Blog.
2016 “Living on Loans”. UCL Emerging Subjects Blog.
Awards
2020 Bayly Prize Finalist
2019 Irene Hilgers Prize
