Catherine Wanner

Catherine Wanner is a historical anthropologist and Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History, Anthropology, and Religious Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. Using ethnographic and archival methods, her research centers on the politics of religion and increasingly on conflict mediation, ecocide, and trauma healing. She served as the Senior Advisor to the Religion and Inclusive Societies program at the United States Institute of Peace until it was unlawfully shut down in 2025. In addition to several other books on Ukraine, her two most recent publications are Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (Cornell, 2022), which won two book prizes, and an edited volume, Dispossession: Anthropological Perspectives on Russia’s War Against Ukraine (Routledge, 2024). She is currently writing a book entitled, Ecocide, Animals, and Empathy after the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.