EP#81 Lifeworlds & Studying Aotearoa: Susanna Trnka on Traversing Multiple Lifeworlds & Publics

The Familiar Strange

For this episode, Joe sits down with Susanna Trnka from the Anthropology department at the University of Auckland. Susanna is an associate professor in the anthropology department at the University of Auckland. Susanna received her PhD from Princeton before moving to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2003. Her research has been undertaken in Fiji, the Czech Republic, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Susanna is the author of three books: ‘State of Suffering: Political Violence and Community Survival in Fiji’, ‘One Blue Child: Asthma, Responsibility and the Politics of Global Health,’ and her 2020 book ‘Traversing: Embodied Lifeworlds in the Czech Republic.’ She is the co-author of ‘Young Women of Prague’ with Alena Heltlinger and has edited five other books. Her many articles and chapters cover topics such as embodiment, state-citizen relations, subjectivity, responsibility, states of emergencies, Covid-19 responses, and the politics of medicine. Joe begins by discussing Susanna’s upcoming role as editor-in-chief of American Ethnologist and her plans for the journal. They then talk about Susanna’s book ‘Traversing’ and how anthropologists might think about the idea of lifeworlds and conclude with a discussion regarding Susanna’s work on the current pandemic in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Head over to our Website for a full list of links and citations!