Dr Charlotte Linton

I am a social anthropologist and designer whose work is situated at the intersection of visual, material and economic anthropology, textiles and ethnoecology. I am interested in the relationships that craftspeople have with the environments from which they extract and use resources during commodity production. I identify historical and contemporary links that concern the exploitation of ecosystems, workers and underrepresented communities. I have carried out ethnographic work with Harris Tweed weavers in Scotland (2015) and received a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford (2021) with a thesis based on 12-months of apprenticeship-based fieldwork with natural dyers on the island of Amami Oshima, Japan. My first monograph, Dyeing with the Earth: Textiles, Tradition and Sustainability in Contemporary Japan (2025), has been published with Duke University Press. My current research explores the intersection of textiles and agriculture in diverse geographies. Using comparative ethnography, I am seeking to understand how small-scale producers of natural fibres and dyestuffs are adapting their practices in the context of challenging environmental, social, and economic conditions. I ask whether a grassroots approach to regenerative land stewardship and aspirations to work more ethically and sustainably might trickle up, impacting the wider fashion and textiles industries at scale.