Julia C. Morris

Dr. Julia Morris is Associate Professor of International Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is a socio-cultural anthropologist specializing in political and legal anthropology.

Dr. Morris' research focuses on forced migration, refugees, and humanitarianism. In her work, she looks at the moves of western governments towards developing outsourced asylum regimes. She conceptualizes these patterns as a contemporary form of resource extraction, much like other forms of mining, but that involves racialized migrants as commodities. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the impacts of outsourcing asylum in the Republic of Nauru, Australia, Geneva, and Fiji to research projects in Guatemala, Jordan, and Lebanon.

Her book, Asylum and Extraction in the Republic of Nauru, is recently published with Cornell University Press. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on these policy arrangement tendencies, but is also a proponent of public scholarship. Her writing has been published in public media outlets, including The Conversation, the Migration Policy Institute's Migration Information Source, and Georgetown University’s Oceanic Currents. She also regularly gives media interviews on these concerns including for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She was awarded the 2024 Rising Research Excellence Award from UNCW for faculty who are recognized as emerging leaders in their fields.

As someone who has grown up across continents and recognizes borders to be racialized mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, she is committed to making the world a safe and welcoming place for all.

http://www.juliacmorris.com

Education

D.Phil. in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.