This conversation is the third in our mini-pod series on crisis and the digital. In it, Mythily Meher speaks to Susan Wardell while they are in lockdown in Aotearoa New Zealand. They talk about the shape of work, life, distress and future research in this pandemic, and—reflecting on Susan’s work with an online climate change ‘doomer’ community—on the kinds of meaning-making people engage in crisis. Susan is a lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University of Ōtākou / Otago in Aotearoa. Her ethnographic work deals with emotion and affect, care, religion and spirituality, mental health and wellbeing, and digital worlds. She also publishes poetry and essays, which you can read in Landfall, The Spinoff, Cordite Poetry review and elsewhere. You can find Susan on twitter at @Unlazy_Susan, and you can browse (and contribute to) the collective online pandemic dream diary she is running (find it by googling “CoviDreams”).

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Conversations in Anthropology is a podcast about life, the universe, and anthropology produced by David Boarder Giles, Timothy Neale, Cameo Dalley, Mythily Meher and Matt Barlow. This podcast is made in partnership with the American Anthropological Association and supported by the Faculty of Arts & Education at Deakin University. Find us at conversationsinanthropology.wordpress.com or on Twitter at @AnthroConvo