Anna Weichselbraun

Anna Weichselbraun, PhD

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Anna Weichselbraun holds a research and teaching postdoc (2018-2025) in the Department of European Ethnology at the University of Vienna. She is currently developing a new project on technologies of trust which is focused on blockchain. She earned a PhD in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2016), and completed a postdoc at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. She previously studied at New York University and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Anna is interested in problems of Anthropocene governance, that is, the social mechanisms and technological infrastructures by which humans attempt to mitigate the uncertainty emanating from each other and their environments. She works at the intersection of an historical anthropology of knowledge, semiotics, and science and technology studies with an empirical focus on the global governance of technology in the long 20th century. She is currently finishing her book manuscript on nuclear knowledge making practices at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has published articles from this research in Cultural Anthropology and PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review.

From August 2022 to May 2023, Anna was a USC-Berggruen Fellow at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, CA where she worked on a project that considered blockchain technologies and possibilities for planetary governance.

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about me

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CV
- seit Dezember 2018
  Universitätsassistentin "postdoc) am Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Univ. Wien
- 2016 - 2018
  Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow am Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
- 2009 - 2016
  PhD-Studium der Sociocultural und Linguistic Anthropology, University of Chicago
- 2007 - 2008
  Master 1 in Enquêtes, Terrains, Théories (Fachübergreifender Studiengang in Anthropologie, Soziologie, und Geschichte) an der Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales/Ecole Normale Supérieure
- 2002 - 2008
  Bachelorstudium in Individualized Study (Schwerpunkt Gender/Media Studies) an der New York University (NYU) (2002-2006), (EHESS/ENS) (2007-2008)
memberships
- Mitglied der Forscher*innengruppe "The State Multiple"
- American Anthropological Association
- International Studies Association
- Association for Political and Legal Anthropology
- Anthropology Society for Cultural Anthropology
- Society for Linguistic Anthropology
- Nuclear Proliferation International History Project

about my research

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Research interests
- Wissensanthropologie
- Objektivierende Praktiken
- Expertenwissen
- Technologie und Regulierung
- Bürokratische Organisationen
- Semiotik und Repräsentation
- Affekt: Furcht und Langeweile
Research projects
- Das Projekt "The Nuclear Order of Things: Bureaucracy, Objectivity, and Boredom at the IAEA" erforscht die Wissenspraktiken der "nuclear safeguards inspectors" an der Internationalen Atomenergieorganisation in Bezug auf die Konstruktion von politischer Legitimität
- Das Projekt "Verification: Technologies of Truth and Trust" untersucht Technologien zur Verifizierung von Informationen, u.a. Blockchain, als Massnahme zur Stabilisierung von politischer und zwischenmenschlicher Ungewissheit
Research periods abroad
- Juni - Juli 2017
  UN headquarters, nuclear ban treaty negotiations
- November 2013; März 2014
  US National Archives, College Park, MD
- November 2013 - Oktober 2014
  Wien, Feldforschung zu IAEA Nuclear Safeguards
- September 2011 - März 2012
  Wien, vorläufige Feldforschung