Alumni Spotlight Spring 2025

Christopher Keller Morris (Anthropology, PhD 2014)

Dr. Morris is an assistant professor of anthropology at George Mason University. A sociocultural anthropologist focused on Southern Africa, his research examines environmental governance, pharmaceutical politics, and post/colonial histories using ethnographic and historical methods. He has collaborated with advocacy groups on land rights activism and resource policies in South Africa. His book, Biotraffic: Medicines and Environmental Governance in the Afterlives of Apartheid (UC Press, 2024), explores how former apartheid “homelands” have become sites where international drug profits intersect with contests over land, extractive jurisdictions, and political power. He has published in American Ethnologist, Medical Anthropology, Anthropology Now, and other journals.