Anna M. Weichselbraun

Anna Weichselbraun is a former Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow (2016-2018). She currently holds the position of Universitaetsassistentin (equivalent to Assistant Professor, non-tenure track) at the Department of European Ethnology at the University of Vienna. Her research examines the knowledge infrastructures of the liberal international order in the context of a crumbling post-Cold War status quo and intensifying planetary threats. Her book The Nuclear Order of Things: Bureaucracy, Objectivity, and Boredom at the IAEA provides an intimate view of the practices and activities of nuclear safeguards inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and connects these quotidian practices to the geopolitics of nuclear governance. Her next project looks at projects of technological verification (including Blockchain and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty verification) as efforts to mitigate the messy uncertainties of social and political life. Anna's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Wilson Center.