Anna Katharina Schaffner Ph.D.

Anna Katharina Schaffner is a burnout and exhaustion coach, a writer, and a professor of Cultural History at the University of Kent. She is the author of two internationally acclaimed books, Exhaustion: A History (Columbia University Press, 2016) and The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths (Yale University Press, 2021). She has also written a novel, various academic works, and journalism and is editor-in-chief of the Emerge website. Her writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, Psychology Today, PositivePsychology, Aeon, PSYCHE, and other places.

​

Anna is deeply passionate about helping people transition from a state of exhaustion to a state of vitality in which they can direct their energy to what really matters in their life. In her coaching practice, she combines state-of-the-art and science-based coaching techniques, including ACT, with tried-and-tested ancient wisdom. Her focus is on the importance of deepening self-knowledge and working on values and character strengths. She also integrates ancient Stoic techniques and the art of letting go into her practice. For new is not always better. Sometimes, the ancient models hold the key to our most urgent present-day problems.