Christina Thurner studied German language and literature, education and history at Zurich University and the Freie University Berlin. She received her PhD in 2001 and her Habilitation in 2008 from Basel University. From 1997 to 2006, she was research assistant with a teaching assignment in the German department at Basel University, and then led the SNF project “Sprechende Körper – Bewegte Seelen”. In addition, she taught at the Institute of Theatre Studies and in the postgraduate program TanzKultur at the University of Bern as well as at the HGK Basel. She has worked as a dance journalist, mainly for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
In 2007, Christina Thurner was appointed Assistant Professor at the Institute of Theatre Studies (ITW), in 2011 Associate Professor, and in 2020 Associate Professor with a focus on Dance Studies.
Since then, she has led several SNSF-projects most recently the SNSF project "Auto_Bio_Grafie as Performance" and has held international guest lectureships. She was also responsible for the doctoral program lnterdisciplinary Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of the Arts and Humanities at the Walter Benjamin Kolleg of the University of Bern, chair of program management of the MAS Dance/Performing Arts program, member of the steering committee of the Graduate School of the Arts, and served on the research and junior staff committee, and the doctoral committee of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Bern. She was a member of the national jury for the Swiss Dance Prize, the expert jury of the Dance Heritage Fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation (Germany), the research advisory board IPF of the ZHdK Zurich and a member of the council Pro Helvetia (Department of Theatre and Dance). She is a member of the Board of Trustees of SAPA (Swiss Archive of Performing Arts) and the UniBE Research Foundation, where she is also a specialist advisor.
From November 2024 to October 2028, she will lead the SNSF project “Social Choreographies”.
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9455-6696
