Dr Mari Valdur is a social anthropologist who was a visitor to the MIASU for three months between April and July 2021. She is currently affiliated to the University of Helsinki, where she recently defended her PhD thesis "Life and Abortion: The Post-Biopolitics of Reproductive Health in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia" (November 2020). As a postdoctoral project, she will be extending her doctoral research into post-socialist neoliberal politico-economics surrounding reproductive health in Ulaanbaatar. Building on a rich disciplinary literature on reproductive health in post-socialist countries in the 1990s and early 2000s, she is interested in the specific ways in which various gender-related insecurities and vulnerabilities remain to emerge. Specifically, this strain of her work covers the topics of informality, privatisation, property, legitimacy and intimacy. Her other research interests include gender-based violence, organisations, democracy and tourism in Mongolia and Estonia.
