Profile

Anna Beresin is a multi-disciplinary scholar with two Ph.D.s, one in Psychology and one in Folklore. A regular visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Anna serves as Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of the Arts. A Lindback Teaching Award winner, she has created several new courses for the University: Observing Humans, Observing Children, Introduction to Folklore and Analyzing Talk, and teaches in the Game Design minor in Multimedia.

All of Anna’s research focuses on play and creative processes, and she has published on a range of topics from toys and children’s museums to the history of movement games. Her book, Recess Battles, will soon be published by the University Press of Mississippi.

Dr. Beresin is a regular contributor to conferences in Folklore, Anthropology and Education, and is committed to the use of media in the documentation of cultural life. She sees the goal of her teaching at the University of the Arts as helping her students think like observant social scientists, and the goal of teaching at UPenn as helping social scientists think more like artists.