Dr Charlotte Linton
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at All Souls College
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 the Outer Hebrides of Scotland (2015) and received a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford (2021) with a thesis based on twelve months of apprenticeship-based fieldwork with natural dye craftspeople on the island of Amami Oshima, southern Japan. A monograph of my doctoral thesis is currently under review. My current research explores the intersection of textiles and agriculture in diverse geographies - the UK, USA and India. 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.
Research interests:
- Textile and craft production
- Socio-ecological relations
- Economic anthropology
- Material Culture and museum studies
- Visual, design and apprenticeship methodologies
- Anthropology of Japan
I am available to supervise DPhil students with shared research interests. Please get in touch via email.
Personal Website: www.charlottelinton.com
All Souls Profile: https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/person/dr-charlotte-linton
Email: charlotte.linton@all-souls.ox.ac.uk
Selected Publications:
2025. Dyeing with the Earth: Textiles, Tradition, and Sustainability in Contemporary Japan
In Dyeing with the Earth, Charlotte Linton explores the intersection of small-scale traditional craft production with contemporary sustainability practices. Focusing on natural textile dyeing on the southern Japanese island of Amami Ōshima, Linton details the complex relationship between preservation practices, resource extraction, and land access in the production of Oshima tsumugi kimono cloth, which uses the indigenous technique of dorozome (or mud-dyeing). As global interest in sustainable fashion grows, textile manufacturers on Amami have expanded from kimono production to dyeing garments and textiles for high-profile designers. While traditional craft may appear at odds with the large-scale global textile industry, Linton reveals how Amamian and global producers face similar social, economic, and environmental pressures. Ethical production in fashion, Linton contends, should focus on understanding local everyday practices that sustain direct relationships between people, place, and environment rather than rely on short-term solutions via new processes or materials. Weaving together ethnography, photography, and illustration, Linton underscores the continued relevance of traditional craft and material cultures amid ongoing climate change and biodiversity loss.
2022: Re-evaluating a tree’s ‘real worth’: The historical dispossession of ecological stewardship and its legacy for a Japanese textile tradition. History and Anthropology. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2022.2116017
2022: ‘The Mejiro bird: between commodity, conservation and companion’ in Animals matter: Resistance and transformation in animal commodification. J. Dugnoille & E. Vander Meer (eds.) Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004528444_005
2020: “Making it for our country”: An ethnography of mud-dyeing on Amami Ōshima island. TEXTILE 18:3, 249-276, DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2019.1690837
