Annette Esser

Annette Esser was born in 1957 in Cologne, Germany into a Catholic artist family with four siblings. She studied teaching of art, theology and geography in Cologne and Münster Universities (1976-85) and became a teacher in her first profession. Based on further trainings in Art Therapy, Bibliodrama and Psychodrama as well as on her second study of Psychiatry & Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York (1994-98), she now works as a therapist. In 2007, she received her theological doctorate with a thesis on feminist spirituality at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands ("Interkontexte feministischer Spiritualität"), and, in 2007 she founded the Scivias Institute for Art & Spirituality named after the major mystical work of Hildegard of Bingen. She now lives and works in Cologne, Bingen, Bad Kreuznach and Disibodenberg together with her son Jacob.