Dr Susan Wardell, Our people, Social Anthropology, University of Otago, New Zealand

Contact

Room 5C25
Tel +64 3 479 8790
Email susan.wardell@otago.ac.nz

Research interests

Sociocultural perspectives on health, mental health, and disability; metaphors of wellbeing; narratives of illness and healing
Mediated and online representations of (and responses to) suffering and trauma; care, empathy, compassion, memorialisation
Social media, digital sociality, embodiment and the digital, phenomenological approaches to the digital
Emotion and emotionality, moral emotion, the politics of emotion, collective emotion, affect theory, affect among digital publics
Neoliberalism and moral relations; care work and identity, nonprofits, responsibility and responsibilisation
Mental health in the anthropocene, climate anxiety/eco-grief, epistemologies of climate change, temporality, hope
Everyday religion (esp. Christianity), secular spirituality

Courses

ANTH 105: Global and Local Cultures
ANTH 312: Cultural Politics
ANTH 325: Rites of Passage: Death, Grief, and Ritual
ANTH 328: The Anthropology of Religion and the Supernatural
ANTH 423: Bodies, Technologies and Medicines
ANTH 424: The Anthropology of Evil

Background and interests

Susan’s PhD (2015) was completed across the fields of Social Anthropology and Communication Studies, at the University of Otago, with major interests in medical and psychological anthropology, moral anthropology, and the anthropology of religion. Her research comprised of a comparative ethnographic study of burnout, in two Christian youth work organisations; in Christchurch, New Zealand (post-quake), and Kampala, Uganda. She published her book - 'Living in the Tension: Care, selfhood, and wellbeing among faith-based youth workers' - in 2018.

Susan was involved as a Research Assistant and co-author on the (2010-2014) Marsden Grant Project: ‘Troubling Choice. Exploring and explaining techniques of moral reasoning for people living at the intersection of reproductive technologies, genetics, and disability’ (PIs Dr Ruth Fitzgerald, Assoc. Prof. Julie Park, University of Auckland, and Assoc. Prof. Mike Legge, University of Otago). Her main contributions focused on Down Syndrome, disability and prenatal genetic testing, and the representation of these within New Zealand media. This led to an offshoot project examining a viral media campaign for a baby with Down Syndrome, in 2015, spurring ongoing interests in care and moral reasoning in digital spaces.

Susan is the Otago representative for SOMAA (Society of Medical Anthropologists in Aotearoa).

Susan is passionate about teaching and completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education from 2018-2019, focusing her research on ‘emotional pedagogies’ for dark or troubling topics. She secured an Otago Teaching & Learning Grant in 2019 , to research a kit of resources to 'bridge' students from other disciplines, into the field of Social Anthropology. This was developed into the publicly-available AnthNav website.

Susan is interested in public anthropology, and is the editor for the programme's blog (blogs.otago.ac.nz/inplural/) as well as regularly contributing pieces to The Spinoff and other public outlets (twitter.com/Unlazy_Susan).

She also enjoys creative writing - publishing and winning awards across several literary genres - and brings an interest in poetry in particular across to her ethnographic work. She currently expanding her interest in visual art and material practice.

Current projects

In 2019 Susan began a research project around 'online care' after the Christchurch mosque shootings. In 2020 she gained a UORG grant, titled “Remembering together: an ethnographic study of the one-year anniversary of the Christchurch mosque attack”, to lead on from this with a focus on both material and digital practices of memorialization around this event.

Susan has recently been awarded a Marsden Fast-Start grant (2020-2023) for a project entitled 'Medical Crowdfunding in New Zealand: Illness, Giving, and Moral Emotion.’ The project analyses campaign pages, as well as conducting case studies and interviews, with both campaigners and audiences/donors. Leading into this project she organised and chaired a panel at the AAA (Vancouver) conference in 2019, entitled 'Performing crisis, practicing care: Navigating the moral life of health and illness in digital environments', which included a number of leading health crowdfunding scholars, and drew on interests intersecting both of her current major projects.

Current supervision (primary supervisor)

Yi Li. Exploring Geographic Happiness Through an Ethnography of Migrants Engaged with Eco-Creative Practices in Iceland and New Zealand

Shannon Blanch. Doing death differently? A digital ethnography of Aotearoa New Zealand death talking communities

Jayden Glen. The Funny Side of Embodying a Comedic Identity: Exploring the significance of cultural identity in the experiences of Māori Stand Up Comedians in New Zealand

Completed supervision (primary supervisor)

Jordan Green (2020). Māori Instagram: The Social Media Lifeworlds and Decolonising Practices of Rangatahi Māori

Samuel McComb (2020). Transformation in Outdoor Education: An anthropological exploration of instructors facilitating client change at TSB TOPEC

Ellan Baker (2020). Creating Success, Finding a Busy Balance: Understandings and Experiences of Student Burnout Among Undergraduate University of Otago Students

Miriam Buhler (2020). “We’re all watching each other”: Bodies, risk, and sociality in a Dunedin supermarket during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown

Athena Macmillan (2019). "Our Bodies Hold Our Stories": How do University of Otago Science students negotiate notions of personhood in relation to cadaveric material, as part of their learning practice?

Etienne Devilliers (2019). A Paradox of Purpose: Embodying identity, and resisting or supplementing western epistemologies, through the teaching of Māori stories in a Dunedin primary school

Yi Li (2019). Improvising Life: An ethnographic study of theatrical improvisation as part of the pursuit of happiness and wellbeing, among three New Zealand troupes [Winner of the Richard Kamman Wellbeing Prize, 2020]

Jayden Glen (2019). Examining Identity Politics Through the Career of New Zealander Taika Waititi

Asia Brownlie (2018). Embodied ink: tattooing and the negotiation of fluid feminine identities in New Zealand

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Publications

Wardell, S. (2022). Walking memories: From the Red Zone to the city on the tenth anniversary of the Canterbury earthquakes. Anthropology & Humanism. doi: 10.1111/anhu.12373

Wardell, S. (2021). To wish you well: The biopolitical subjectivities of medical crowdfunders during and after Aotearoa New Zealand’s COVID-19 lockdown. BioSocieties. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1057/s41292-021-00251-7

Wardell, S. (2021). Fingeryeyes; Social scripts; Flow [Three poems exploring digital affect]. Anthropology & Humanism, 46(1), 138-144. doi: 10.1111/anhu.12324

Wardell, S. (2021). Companion planting: The art and history of gardening [Review of the books Common Ground & Karl Maughan]. The Spinoff, (30 April). Retrieved from https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/30-04-2021/companion-planting-the-art-and-history-of-gardening

Neuwelt-Kearns, C., Baker, T., Calder-Dawe, O., Bartos, A. E., & Wardell, S. (2021). Getting the crowd to care: Marketing illness through health-related crowdfunding in Aotearoa New Zealand. Environment & Planning A. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/0308518X211009535

Wardell, S. (2018). Living in the tension: Care, selfhood, and wellbeing among faith-based youth workers. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 260p.

Authored Book - Research

Wardell, S. (2022). Walking memories: From the Red Zone to the city on the tenth anniversary of the Canterbury earthquakes. Anthropology & Humanism. doi: 10.1111/anhu.12373

Journal - Research Article

Wardell, S. (2020). Naming and framing ecological distress. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 7(2), 187-201. doi: 10.17157/mat.7.2.769

Journal - Research Article

Trundle, C., & Wardell, S. (2019). The meaning of pain: Exploring the intersections of poetry and ethnography. Irish Journal of Anthropology, 22(1), 238-253.

Journal - Research Article

Wardell, S. (2019). Weaving together: Aroha as capacity and work. Sites, 16(2), 1-10. doi: 10.11157/sites-id446

Journal - Research Article

Wardell, S., & Fitzgerald, R. (2019). Psychometrics as moral labour: Subject formation at the intersection of neoliberal and spiritual discourse. BioSocieties, 14, 345-367. doi: 10.1057/s41292-018-0130-3

Journal - Research Article

Fitzgerald, R. P., Wardell, S., & Legge, M. (2018). Fetal genetic difference and a cosmopolitan vernacular of the right to choose. Women's Studies International Forum, 67, 110-117. doi: 10.1016/j.wsif.2017.04.001

Journal - Research Article

Wardell, S. (2018). 'A stranger in the name of Jesus': Exploring cosmopolitan ethics in a Ugandan Christian care community. Sites, 15(2), 165-188. doi: 10.11157/sites-id404

Journal - Research Article

Wardell, S., Fitzgerald, R. P., Legge, M., & Clift, K. (2014). A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the New Zealand media portrayal of Down syndrome. Disability & Health Journal, 7(2), 242-250. doi: 10.1016/j.dhjo.2013.11.006

Journal - Research Article

Wardell, S. (2013). Doctors and All Blacks: How depression and its treatment is framed in New Zealand GP-targeted advertising. Sites, 10(2), 52-81. doi: 10.11157/sites-vol10iss2id217

Journal - Research Article

Wardell, S. (2021). Fingeryeyes; Social scripts; Flow [Three poems exploring digital affect]. Anthropology & Humanism, 46(1), 138-144. doi: 10.1111/anhu.12324

Journal - Research Other

Wardell, S. (2019). Is it me or is it us? [Review of the book Not for ourselves alone: Belonging in an age of loneliness]. Landfall Review Online. Retrieved from https://landfallreview.com

Journal - Research Other

Journal - Professional & Other Non-Research Articles

Wardell, S. (2021). The politics of memory, on the anniversary of tragedy. The Spinoff, (22 February). Retrieved from https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/22-02-2021/christchurch-remembers-the-politics-of-memory-on-the-anniversary-of-tragedy

Journal - Professional & Other Non-Research Articles

Wardell, S. (2020). A review of "The Overstory", a knockout novel that speaks for the trees. The Spinoff, (9 April). Retrieved from https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/06-01-2021/a-review-of-the-overstory-a-knockout-novel-that-speaks-for-the-trees-2

Journal - Professional & Other Non-Research Articles

Wardell, S. (2020). The uncomfortable truth about medical crowdfunding in New Zealand. The Spinoff, (16 September). Retrieved from https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/16-09-2020/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-medical-crowdfunding-in-new-zealand#:~:text=The%20uncomfortable%20truth%20about%20medical%20crowdfunding%20in%20New%20Zealand,-Susan%20Wardell%20%7C%20Guest&text=New%20research%20into%20online%20crowdfunding,the%20failure%20of%20the%20state.%E2%80%9D

Journal - Professional & Other Non-Research Articles

Wardell, S. (2019). Growing up is hard to do: Philip Pullman’s "The Secret Commonwealth", reviewed [Review of the book The Secret Commonwealth. The Spinoff, (14 November). Retrieved from https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/14-11-2019/growing-up-is-hard-to-do-philip-pullmans-the-secret-commonwealth-reviewed

Journal - Professional & Other Non-Research Articles

Woulfe, C., Roy, C., & Wardell, S. (2019). Rejoice! The best book in the world is being republished today [Review of the book Winter of Fire]. The Spinoff, (1 July). Retrieved from https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/01-07-2019/rejoice-the-best-book-in-the-world-is-being-republished-today

Journal - Professional & Other Non-Research Articles

Wardell, S. (2014). Conversations at Butabika: A snapshot of the tensions between biomedical and spiritual knowledge systems in Ugandan psychiatric care. Proceedings of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AFSAAP) Annual Conference. AFSAAP. [Full Paper]

Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper

Wardell, S., & Fitzgerald, R. (2018). Dialogical sense-making in the (digital) public sphere: Citizenship, care, and disability. Proceedings of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand (ASAA/NZ) Annual Conference: Improvising Lives. (pp. 47-48). Retrieved from https://www.asaanz.org/past-conferences

Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract

Wardell, S. (2014). Comparing global consciousness in Christianity across two communities: Kampala and Christchurch: A study in vernacular cosmopolitanism. Proceedings of the Combined Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian Anthropological Society (ASAANZ/AAS) Conference: Cosmopolitan Anthropologies. (pp. 64-65). Retrieved from http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/conf/publications.html

Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract

Wardell, S. (2013, November). The greatest is love? A comparative study of mental health and spirituality in two communities of care workers. Poster session presented at the Medical Anthropology in Aotearoa Symposium, Wellington, New Zealand.

Conference Contribution - Poster Presentation (not in published proceedings)

Herbst, P., & Wardell, S. (2019, November). "Look at what you have done (to yourself)": Suffering at the intersection of the individual and the global. Verbal presentation at the Society of Medical Anthropology in Aotearoa (SOMAA) Symposium: Biomedical Dialogues: Thinking Across Bodies and Borderlands, Raglan, New Zealand.