As Senior Editor, Anja guides the development of the Center’s new digital publication, Stories and Ideas, as well as co-edits submissions to this publication. She also spearheads the Questions For a Resilient Future’s Cosmos series—a series focused on reimagining our inter-connections with off-Earth environments. As Land Liaison, Anja inter-connects Stories and Ideas with stories rising from the land on the Center’s new Libertyville home.
Anja also writes and searches out stories that help us reimagine our relationship to each other and to planet Earth as a whole. These stories range from deeper philosophical concepts, to reflections of wider-ranging historical perspectives, to the personal story within local places.
The central exploration in all of Anja’s work is grounded in re-imagining our relationship with the other-than-human, by unmasking modes of thought that uphold our cultural detachment from our natural history; and by helping to create new stories, which bridge this perceived gap between humans and the whole community of life.
Anja received her Master of Arts degree in Geography and Environmental Studies from Northeastern Illinois University and her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
IN HER OWN WORDS
My proudest moment: standing up for the bullied “Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie” back in high school.
My heroes: free thinkers & star gazers.
What I obsess about: coming to know my connection to the cosmos.
What makes me smile: sitting in some good prairie soil and looking up.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMANS & NATURE:
Minding Nature contributions:
- Darkreconstruction
- Timefulness: A Geologist’s Story—Interview with Marcia Bjornerud
- Art in the Anthropocene
- Landscape Art? An Interview with Sandra Dal Poggetto
- An Ethical Journey into Deep Time
- Democracy and The Climate Crisis
- Pro-Aesthetic Language: Natural Treasures vs. Natural Resources
- A Language to Embody Place: Dynamic, Braided, Wild
- Being in Relationship, with Nature?
- Wild Places in Urban Centers
- Setting Ethics Free?
Questions for a Resilient Future responses:
City Creatures Blog posts:
- The Wild and Not-So-Wild City Creature Neighbors at, by, and in My House
- Re-wilding Our Urban Ethics and Politics?
- “Morals and Evolutionary Biology” Anja Claus on Medium
- “Universal Morality” Anja Claus on Medium