2024 Completed PhD in Environmental Anthropology. Dissertation Abstract: Flagstaff, Arizona, USA is a mountain town nestled in the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in the world. The increase of more frequent, high-severity wildfires is framing how people experience the changing forest they live in and imagine forest futures. Through ethnographic study, an unlikely agreement emerged around prescribed burning as a tool to mitigate the effects of severe wildfires, revealing a fragile, joint forest future vision across socio-cultural groups. However, while this agreement in a politically polarized national context was surprising, my ethnography unveiled how people had different explanations for why they supported “returning fire to the land.” Ultimately, I propose that this agreement was possible through the affective circulation of prescribed burning as aligned with the ideology of stewarding the land. Agreement around prescribed burning as a tool of stewardship holds possibilities for spreading perceptions of futural influence in the midst of uncertain and destructive forest futures. Yet, the enactment of prescribed burning on the ground underscored social dissonances of political and economic obstruction. Through interviews with Diné and Hopi foresters and cultural advocates, firefighters, loggers, U.S. forest service employees, and environmentalists, prescribed burning materialized as an object of emotion (Ahmed 2014) that resonated across socio-political boundaries and precariously bound people together in their joint vision to return fire to the forest.

2019-2024 PhD candidate/Research Associate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, https://www.ethnologie.uni-hamburg.de/en/personen/coral-o-brian.html University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, with the interdisciplinary climate project CLICCS: https://www.cliccs.uni-hamburg.de/about-cliccs.html

2019 Master of Arts in Medical Anthropology, Health and Society of South Asia, Thesis: “The Practice of Be(e)ing with Bees: Making Care in the Anthropocene” (ethnography with bees, farmers, and beekeepers in Gujarat, India)

2018 Field work in Gujarat, India as part of the Master's thesis partially funded by DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst)

2017-2019 Student Research Assistant for DIALOGIK, a non-profit research institute focused on navigating complex processes of communication in health and the environment: https://www.dialogik-expert.de/en

2016- 2019 MA of Medical Anthropology, Health and Society of South Asia, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

2015-2016 AmeriCorps community nutrition educator at Tucson Village Farm, Tucson, Arizona. Taught kindergartners through 8th graders about soil health, food systems, pollination, and nutrition.

2015 Bachelor of Arts in International Studies (major) with a concentration in Global Health and Environmental Sustainability, and Public Health (minor)

2014 Semester abroad at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, Copenhagen, Denmark (Public Health and Sociology)

2013- 2014 Semester abroad at Manipal University, Karnataka, India (Public Health, Ayurveda, and Anthropology)

2011- 2015 BA International Studies, American University, Washington, DC

1992 born in Vermont, USA

Selected Publications:

Guenther, Lars, Youssef Ibrahim, Jana Lüdemann, Coral Iris O’Brian, Christopher N. Pavenstädt, Inga Janina Sievert, Michael Brüggemann, Simone Rödder, and Michael Schnegg. 2024. “Social Constructions of Climate Futures: Reframing Science’s Harmful Impact Frame Across News Media, Social Movements, and Local Communities.” Environmental Communication 18 (3): 322–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2024.2305827

Schnegg, Michael., O’Brian, Coral Iris. & Sievert, Inga Janina. 2021. “It’s Our Fault: A Global Comparison of Different Ways of Explaining Climate Change.” Human Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00229-w

Berker, R., G. Wachinger, F. Dembski, R. Fritz, I. Erzikgeit, J. Goder, E. Fauth, S. K. Wist, A. Schaffrin and M. Koppel. Contributors: Roland Fritz, Ilse Erzikgeit, Martin Koppel, Coral O'Brian et al. 2020. Kommunale Planung: Bürger erfolgreich beteiligen, Kohlhammer (Municipal Planning: Successfully Involving Citizens)

Wachinger, Gisela., Keilholz, Patrick. & O’Brian, Coral. 2018.“The Difficult Path from Perception to Precautionary Action—Participatory Modeling as a Practical Tool to Overcome the Risk Perception Paradox in Flood Preparedness.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 9, 472–485. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13753-018-0203-8