Christopher Morton (MA MSt DPhil, Oxf) is Head of Curatorial, Research and Teaching and Curator of Photograph and Manuscript Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Associate Professor of Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Linacre College. He trained in History at the University of East Anglia before undertaking MSt and DPhil studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology at St Antony’s College, Oxford, between 1995 and 2002, during which time he conducted long-term fieldwork in Botswana. Christopher’s research has long centred on the overlapping histories of photography, anthropology and museum collections, especially how the visual technologies of the past have influenced the way that other cultures and societies have been understood within European social science, and how these legacies continue to shape social and cultural attitudes in the contemporary world. He also has more recent research strands on the relationship between photography and the philosophy of history and the concept of place. He is also developing interdisciplinary research with neuroscientists and philosophers on the concept of eudaimonia (the life well lived) and the museum.
Christopher's latest publication is a monograph on the fieldwork and photography of renowned British social anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard (The Anthropological Lens: Rethinking E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Oxford University Press 2019).