Human reproduction; health, illness, and healing; new (bio-)technologies and material culture; time and the future; anthropology of the good life; knowledge production and expertise; kinship, sexuality and care.

Europe: Switzerland; Southeast Asia: Myanmar

Anina Meier, a doctoral candidate at the University Research Priority Program (URPP)  Human Reproduction Reloaded (H2R) of the University of Zurich, is conducting an ethnographic research project under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Annuska Derks on the social-cultural negotiation processes and futures of the possible application and further development of gene editing (CRISPR/Cas9) in human reproduction.

She holds a B.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology and an M.A. in Anthropology and Gender Studies from the University of Zurich. Her Bachelor's thesis on ageing in Kazakhstan and her Master's thesis on intergenerational caregiving in rural Myanmar drew on research experiences from a field study in Myanmar, a summer school in Cambodia and an excursion to Kazakhstan.

Subsequently, Anina Meier worked as a teaching assistant at the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich under Prof. Dr. Mareile Flitsch.
Her non-academic background includes training as a health professional in a psychiatric clinic and several years’ work experience in the field of health and migration.
She has two daughters.

Requests for supervision of Bachelor’s theses in the above research areas are welcome. 

Research project “Potentialities of CRISPR: An ethnography of reproductive medicine in Switzerland”