PD Dr. Dorothea Heuschert-Laage

Dorothea Heuschert-Laage works on dependency relations in Mongolian history and approaches this topic from a legal anthropology perspective. She is especially interested in the transitional period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How did the integration of Mongol and Tungus societies into the Qing state (1636-1911) transform or reinforce strong asymmetrical dependencies? How can we understand multi-layered dependencies? Which local actors benefitted from changing political conditions and whose dependency persisted? Dorothea Heuschert-Laage investigates these questions using Mongolian and Manchu archival texts such as administrative documents and legal records.

In phase 1, she adopted a microhistorical approach to focus on gender and property relations in an eighteenth-century Inner Mongolian community. In phase 2, she explores the situation of war captives in the Manchu campaigns of the early seventeenth century. Usually, in the aftermath of war, part of the defeated population was deported and distributed among meritorious commanders. The project takes a look at terminological concepts in order to study how the uprooting of human beings was framed in the language of gift exchange. In addition, it examines the role of gender in the outcome of enslavement and social dislocation. Girls and women were displaced along with their families, but also individually. While enslaved households were usually equipped with essential supplies and livestock, enslaved individuals were not. The research starts from the hypothesis that the gifting of households often confirmed existing dependency relations, whereas girls and women given as "reward" to military commanders were uprooted from their social networks.

2021
Habilitation, University of Bonn, Venia legendi in Mongolian Studies

1993–1997
Ph.D. in Mongolian Studies, University of Bonn and Harvard University (USA)

1985–1993
M.A. in Sinology, Mongolian Studies and Medieval History, University of Bonn and Inner Mongolia University (China)

09/2024–12/2024
Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study (Starr Foundation East Asian Studies Member)

11/2014–10/2017
Research Assistant (SNF), Institute for the Science of Religion and Central Asian Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland

since 2021
TRA 5: Past Worlds and Modern Questions. Cultures Across Time and Space, University of Bonn

2014–2017
Research project (SNF): "Mongolian Perceptions of the World in Times of Emerging Global Networks: The Ordos Region in the Last Decades of the Qing Empire," Institute for the Science of Religion and Central Asian Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland

2011–13
Research project MPI: "Dealing with Nationalities in Eurasia. How Russian and Chinese Agencies Managed Ethnic Diversity in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries," Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale

1997–1998
Cataloguing Manchu manuscripts and woodprints preserved at the University Library of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), Ferdinand Verbiest Institute

1997–1998
Cataloguing Manchu manuscripts and woodprints preserved at the University Library of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), Ferdinand Verbiest Institute

2022–2023
Research scholarship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation

1997
Research Award of the Societas Uralo-Altaica e.V.

1995–1996
Junior Scholar Grant, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange

1995
Graduate Scholarship of North Rhine-Westphalia

1993–1994
German Academic Exchange Service, one-year-grant for doctoral candidates

1987–1989
German Academic Exchange Service, two-year-grant for M.A. candidates1997
Research Award of the Societas Uralo-Altaica e.V.

1995–1996
Junior Scholar Grant, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange

1995
Graduate Scholarship of North Rhine-Westphalia

1993–1994
German Academic Exchange Service, one-year-grant for doctoral candidates

1987–1989
German Academic Exchange Service, two-year-grant for M.A. candidates