Susanna Trnka
Medical Anthropologist
BA (University of California at Berkeley), PhD (Princeton University)
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Auckland (New Zealand)
I am a social/cultural and medical anthropologist. I grew up in the United States, completed my undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and then went on to do a PhD at Princeton University, before moving to New Zealand in 2003. I’ve carried out anthropological fieldwork in the Czech Republic, Fiji, and New Zealand on a range of topics including: crises and states of emergency; patient subjectivity; state-citizen relations; and embodiment.
My most recent project is a phenomenological ethnographic examination of our ways of seeing, experiencing, and moving through the world and the kinds of persons we become through them, a process I refer to as traversing.
I am currently involved in two projects: examining New Zealanders' responses to COVID-19 and investigating young New Zealanders’ uses of digital technology for promoting mental wellbeing.