About the person
Catherine Wanner is a Professor at the Pennsylvania State University with appointments in the departments of History, Anthropology, and Religious Studies. She received her doctorate in cultural anthropology from Columbia University. She is the author or editor of six books on Ukraine. Her most recent book, Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (Cornell University Press, 2022), is a study of how an affective atmosphere of religiosity has shaped key historical events, including the Maidan protests, and has influenced the expansion of religiosity in public space and public institutions. Her research has been supported by awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among others. In 2016-17 she was a visiting professor at the Institute of European Ethnology of Humboldt University and in 2019-20 she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. She was awarded the 2020 Distinguished Scholar Prize from the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity.
Research projects
She is currently conducting research on religion and conflict mediation in Ukraine. The goal of this ethnographic research is to understand how facilitated dialogue can influence forms of participatory democracy as part of greater efforts to solve tangible problems of everyday life. This research considers how such forms of engagement might cultivate, mobilize, and sometimes transform (for better or for worse) theo-political values of trust, hope, and empathy, meaning shared cultural values with distinct religious underpinnings that have direct political relevance, and affect relationships and prospects for change in communities across Ukraine.
She is the convener of the Working Group on Lived Religion in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, a research network that sponsors an annual conference and monthly seminars, thanks to support from the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe, University of St. Gallen University.
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