Dr Anna Vainio

Anna Vainio is an Anthropologist working in the context of East Asia, with a specific focus on contemporary Japanese society. She gained her doctorate degree from the University of Sheffield in 2020, with her thesis exploring the post-disaster recovery in north-east Japan, and the disconnect in the framing and narration of post-disaster plans for the future between the authorities and victim communities. The work draws attention to the importance of affective elements in communal sense-making and articulation of experiences and life plans in socially disruptive contexts, contrasting their stories with the formal recovery policies and institutional frameworks where these elements are largely missing. Her overall research interests are related to the exploration of lived experiences in the context of sociological ruptures, bordering trauma, and memory studies while maintaining a commitment to ethnographic methods.