Rate My Professor Shannon Blanch

Shannon Blanch is an Administrator in the Pro-Vice-Chancellor's Office for the Division of Sciences at the University of Otago. She is based in the Divisional Office on the third floor of the Science Library in Dunedin, where she welcomes students, staff, and visitors as the first point of contact. Shannon provides assistance with various queries and offers administrative support to her colleagues in the office. With her role, she contributes to the smooth operation of the Division of Sciences. Shannon looks forward to welcoming individuals to the Division of Sciences.

In her academic career, Shannon Blanch earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Otago in 2021. Her thesis, "Doing death differently? A digital ethnography of Aotearoa New Zealand death talking communities," focuses on digital ethnography methods applied to communities engaged in discussions about death in Aotearoa New Zealand. The work has been cited by three subsequent publications. She was a postgraduate student in the Social Anthropology programme. Blanch received the 2018 Dying and Bereavement Special Interest Group Emerging Scholar Paper Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology for her paper titled “The Good, Dead (Digital) Citizen: Responsibilisation and Deathmanagement Websites.” Her research covers topics such as digital conversations about death in New Zealand, the death cafe movement, ideas of opening up conversations about death, and the responsibilisation of the dying individual. She presented her research at the Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand annual conference. Blanch also signed an open letter from academics, researchers, and educators in solidarity with the school strike for climate as an MA candidate at the University of Otago in 2019.