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Staff profile

Overview

Dr Christina Bosbach

PDRA

(she/her)

Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
PDRA in the Department of Anthropology
Fellow of the Institute for Medical Humanities

Biography

I'm a postdoctoral researcher in the COAST project, which looks at walking, wheeling and cycling in rural coastal areas in East Durham. Using ethnographic and creative methods, I explore how mundane mobility practices connect to larger social, political and environmental issues. I have presented and am writing up research outputs about the labour that bodies affected by different dimensions of inequality undertake to be able to move, and about the question of sustainable futures in post-industrial communities. 

My PhD (2024, University of Aberdeen) discussed island life in Scotland during the COVID-19 pandemic based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork on the Isle of Coll between August 2020 and August 2021. This research documented everyday life during an extraordinary moment, following the ways in which the island was entangled with the mainland and exploring how the pandemic unsettled relations to other islanders amidst fear of contagion. 

All this research is driven by an interest in how people make a life in coastal and island places, coping with socio-economic and climate change related uncertainties. In my research and writing, I enjoy using creative methods and writing – storytelling, evocative ethnography and poetry – as a means of engaging with embodied, affective ways of knowing and of sharing research with different audiences.

 

Selected conference presentations and invited talks: 

Finding new ways: Walking as a creative way of coping with uncertainty. Walking the Line Workshop, University of Marburg, Germany, October 2025. 

Emotional landscapes of net zero travel: Active and sustainable travel in County Durham. RGS-IGB Annual International Conference, Birmingham, UK, August 2025.

COAST Project Updates. Annual Scientific Meeting, School of Public Health Research (SPHR), Bristol, UK, May 2025.

Travelling in and out of comfort zones. Health, Environment and Anthropology (HEAT). Durham, UK, April 2025.

Knowing well. GASCA German Association for Anthropology. Roundtable: Trading safety for knowledge. Munich, Germany, July 2023. 

Microdynamics of joy. ASA Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK. Panel: Towards an anthropology of joy in a post-pandemic world. London, UK, April 2023. 

 

Teaching and Supervision

As part of my roles at Teaching Assistant and later Teaching Fellow, I have lectured and taught across undergraduate levels at the University of Aberdeen on the following courses:

Introduction to Anthropology: Question of Diversity (level 1); Humans and Other Animals (level 1); Colonialism Re-Imagined (level 2); Sociology of Everyday Life: Embodied Self (level 2); Emotion, Self and Society (level 3)

At Durham, I guest lectured on the interdisciplinary MSc Physical Activity, Health and Society and in the PGR Write up seminar. I particularly enjoy leading workshops on academic and creative writing, and I have co-organised sessions on Coping with Uncertainty, Ways into Writing, Multimodal Ethnography, and Getting Started with Thesis Writing. 

I co-supervised a dissertation project on women's mobilities in Scotland for the MSc Environtment and Human Health at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (University of Exeter): Phoebe Somervail, completed. 

 

 

Publications

Chapter in book

Journal Article