Sophie Wagner is PostDoc Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Vienna, with a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Bern. She is currently working on a collaborative project on smartphone addiction that combines anthropology, performance, and film, which reflects her broad, long-term commitment to public anthropology and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Starting from November 2026 she will continue with her project Assembling the Dis/Abled Body in the Age of AI. On Care and the Imaginaries of Intelligent Prosthetics (a two-year SNF-funded PostDoc.Mobility grant) at the University of Amsterdam. It investigates how imaginaries of automation, functionality, and a technology-led “quasi-cure” shape rehabilitation practices and lived experiences of prosthetic use.
As a trained visual anthropologist (Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, Manchester) and documentary filmmaker, multimodal practices are central to Sophie’s work. Her PhD research with type 1 diabetes patients and health care workers involved creative elicitation processes and audiovisual storytelling. Body Mapping was used to explore what happens to living with a chronic disease when care becomes algorithmic – to explore re-negotiations of evidence, expertise and “good” care.
Sophie conducted fieldwork and made films in Israel, Australia and Austria and worked as a researcher for various feature-length documentaries. She teaches ethnographic filmmaking and works as curator for film festivals (previously mainly ethnocineca – International Documentary Film Festival Vienna). She also organizes the festival’s own biannual filmmaking workshop Filmwerkstatt.
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
NIG, 4th floor
Universitätsstraße 7
1010 Vienna
Imagined Aboriginality. The instrumentalisation of ‚culture’ in the struggles of legitimising and exercising power in multicultural Australia. (Diploma Thesis, University of Vienna, 2012)
Transformiert euch! (2022) Germany. Funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung („Ideologische und Ästhetische Transformations-Barrieren“). Research, dramaturgical guidance and camera. Directed by Marie-Christin Rissinger. 64”
Neue Welten – Ein Museum im Wandel (2019) Austria. Co-directed by Sophie Wagner and Martin Lintner. Camera and sound. 83”
On Common Ground (2013) Israel. MA diploma film & thesis, University of Manchester. 25”
2013. Eurozentrische Narrative der Authentizität in ihrem rezenten Kontext. In: Australien. 18. Bis 21. Jahrhundert. Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Hrsg. Mückler, Weichart, Edelmayer. ProMedia
September 2025: “Living in the Loop. Patient Labor and Tech-Imaginaries in Diabetes Care” Paper presentation at Medical Anthropology Europe conference
September 2024: “Images as evidence (of what?). The Body at the Intersection of Science and Art.” Panel co-convenor at VANDA conference, Vienna
September 2024: “Chronic living with artificial intelligence. The promises and (new) vulnerabilities of semi-automated blood sugar monitoring.” Paper presentation at the “Popular Health & Social Media” conference, University of Siegen
November 2022: “Visualizing Data Bodies. A critical approach to techno-solutionism by allowing for multiple understandings of the chronically ill body.” GSAH Interdisciplinary Cultures Studies – Colloquium “Mediality” with Kate Hennessy
October 2022: “Always ON. More-than-human assemblages of care of people living with type 1 diabetes in Austria.” Colloquium Talk. Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern.
July 2022: “Transforming vulnerabilities. Imaginaries and epistemologies of emerging
assemblages of care”. EASA conference (Belfast) – Transformation, Hope and the Commons. Panel: Imagining alternative data futures (Alexandra, Schäuble, Verstappen, Wagner).
June 2022: “Negotiating techno-imaginaries in the clinic: the future of ‘good lives’”. RAI conference – Anthropology, AI and the Future of Human Society. Panel: AI and interdisciplinary Futures Anthropology (Pink, Quilty, Lanzeni, Dahlgren)
April 2022: “Entangled Practices. Vom Sehen, Vorstellen, Erinnern und Filmen.“ Workshop at the ethnocincea Filmwerkstatt