Anna Katharina Schaffner

Anna is a writer, coach and Professor of Cultural History at the University of Kent. She is the author of Exhaustion: A History (Columbia University Press, 2016) and The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths (Yale University Press, 2021). She has also written a novel, The Truth about Julia (Allen & Unwin, 2016), various academic works and journalism, and she is editor-in-chief of the Emerge website. 

Her writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, Psychology Today, Positive Psychology, AEON and PSYCHE. Her research has been discussed in national and international media, including by BBC Radio 4 and WBUR, as well as in Vogue, the Atlantic, National Geographic, Philosophie Magazine, the TLS and New Republic.