Dr.in Anna Wanka

Adresse

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Institut für Sozialpädagogik und Erwachsenenbildung

Besucher*innenadresse:
Campus Westend, IKB-Gebäude
4. OG, Raum 4500
Eschersheimer Landstraße 121
60322 Frankfurt am Main

Postadresse:
Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1
IKB-Gebäude, Postfach 3
60323 Frankfurt am Main

+49 (0)69 798-36782
wanka(at)em.uni-frankfurt.de
CV und Publikationen Anna Wanka

Dr.inAnna Wanka studied sociology and law at the University of Vienna, where she finished her PhD in sociology in 2016. From 2009 to 2016 she worked as a junior researcher in the research group “Family, Generations, Life Course, and Health” at the Department of Sociology in Vienna. Since 2017 she is a postdoctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. 

Anna Wanka’s areas of expertise comprise the social practices of ‘doing age’, life course transitions / retirement and the re/production of social inequalities across the life course, ageing and technologies, age-friendly cities and communities, ageing migrants, and lifelong learning. Theoretically she is specialized in practice theories, in which she was trained in the postgraduate programme “Sociology of Social Practices”, as well as through several international research fellowships. She is competent in both qualitative and quantitative methods and has high expertise in mixed-methods research. Anna Wanka is used to working in interdisciplinary and international projects, and has been involved in numerous successful national and project proposals. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed international journal articles, 19 books chapters and three monographs.

In the DFG-funded interdisciplinary research training group “Doing Transitions”, she explores the multi-sited, multi-agential process of retiring as a constellation of social practices in her project “Doing Retiring – The Social Practices of Transiting into Retirement and the Distribution of Transitional Risks”. 

Research project

Doing Retiring – The Social Practices of Transiting into Retirement and the Distribution of Transitional Risks

With the ageing of the “Baby Boomer” cohort, more and more adults are transiting from working life into retirement. This transition is shaped by different institutions and societal discourses and entails risks and chances that are coped with in diverse ways by different groups of persons. The research project focuses on the social practices of retiring, asking: How is retiring being done? Methodologically the project follows 30 older adults in Germany throughout their process of retiring from before to three years after retirement. It follows a longitudinal mixed-methods design with a qualitative focus, combining episodic interviews, daily diaries and non-participant observations with quantitative secondary data analysis of German Time Use Data (GTUS). 

Key publications

  • Walther, A.; Stauber, B.; Rieger-Ladich, M.; Wanka, A. (Hrsg.) (2020): Reflexive Übergangsforschung – Theoretische und methodologische Grundlagen. Opladen, Berlin & Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich.
  • Wanka, A. (2019c): No time to waste – How the social practices of temporal organisation change in the transition from work to retirement. Time & Society, 0(0), 1-24.
    Online First: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0961463X19890985
  • Wanka, A. (2019b): Continuity and Change in the Transition to Retirement: How Time Allocation, Leisure Practices and Lifestyles Evolve when Work Vanishes in Later Life. European Journal of Ageing.
    Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-019-00526-w 
  • Wanka, A. (2019a): Change Ahead—Emerging Life-Course Transitions as Practical Accomplishments of Growing Old(er). Frontiers in Sociology. 
    Link: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2018.00045  
  • Gallistl, V.; Parisot, V. & Wanka, A. (2018): Learning to be Old – ‚Doing‘ Age in the Education of Older Adults. International Journal of Education and Ageing, 4(3), 157-175.
  • Wanka, A.; Wiesböck, L.; Allex, B.; Mayrhuber, E.; Arnberger, A.; Eder, R.; Kutalek, R.; Wallner, P.; Hutter, H.-P.; Kolland, F. (2018). Everyday discrimination in the neighbourhood: What a ‘doing’ perspective on age and ethnicity can offer. Ageing and Society, 1-26. Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X18000466 
  • Wanka A. & Gallistl, V. (2018b):  Doing Age in a Digitized World—A Material Praxeology of Aging with Technology. Frontiers in Sociology 3: 6.  Link: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2018.00006

Teaching (current seminars and courses): 

  • MA1   SE Zu Übergängen forschen – Perspektiven und Methoden zur Erforschung von Übergängen im Lebenslauf (2020S, 2018W)
  • BA8/9 SE Bildung und Alter(n) (2019W)
  • MA2   SE Doing Everyday-Life – Einführung in die sozialwissenschaftlichen Praxistheorien (2019S, 2017W)
  • MA2   SE Lebenslauf, Generation, Biographie oder Entwicklung? Theoretische Perspektiven auf den Lebensverlauf (2018S)

Memberships

  • International Sociological Association (ISA), RC11 
  • European Sociological Association (ESA), RN01
  • British Society for Gerontology (BSG)
  • Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS), Sektion Alter(n) und Gesellschaft & Sektion Wissenssoziologie
  • Research network “Socio-Gerontechnology” (since 2017)
  • DFG-funded research network “Material Gerontology” (2020 – 2022)
  • COST-Action Reducing Old-Age Social Exclusion: Collaborations in Research and Policy (ROSENet) (2016 – 2020)

Research Project

Curriculum Vitae

Publications


Talks and Conferences (selected)

Memberships

           

Teaching