Anna Bloom-Christen

Biography

Anna Bloom-Christen is SNSF Postdoc.Mobility Return Grant Fellow at the institute for Urban Studies, University of St. Gallen, following a 2-year Mobility Fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles (Anthropology) and Rhodes University (Philosophy). She situates her research in, around and between anthropological theory and philosophy of action.

Before receiving her mobility grant, Anna was research associate, lecturer and chair of the Research Group on Political Transformations at the University of Basel.

Anna has earned her PhD in Anthropology in 2020, with a thesis on the meanings and functions of walking together in post-apartheid South Africa. She holds a Master degree in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews and a Bachelor degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences from the University of Basel.

From 2016 until 2019, Anna was PhD graduate fellow in the interdisciplinary Graduiertenkolleg “Das Reale in der Kultur der Moderne” at the University of Konstanz. During this period, she was visiting PhD at the Philosophy Department at the University of Vienna (2017) and Rhodes University (2018).

Anna has designed and taught classes on anthropological theory and methods, the close reading of anthropological classics, the epistemological underpinnings of shared experience, and on the various forms of Participant Observation. Further taught classes include the anthropology of the body, education, intention, public space, and Wittgenstein. She has taught on BA and MA level in Switzerland, Germany, and South Africa.

Anna's current work centres on cultures of attention, attentional habits and their role in higher education.