Shireen Walton holds a BA in history from University College London, and an MPhil and DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford, St. Antony’s College. She has recently completed her doctorate at Oxford, where she was also a Scholar of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS). She is currently a Postdoctoral Associate and Tutorial Fellow of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford. Her doctoral thesis is entitled 'Camera Iranica: popular digital photography in/of Iran'. It explores the historical significance, ethnographic dimensions and artistic agencies of contemporary Iranian popular photography shown and seen online. Her research interests include photography, media and social change, documentary practices, art and aesthetics, and digital-visual cultural storytelling from below. She publishes on these themes, as well as on developing collaborative and participatory digital-visual methods for ethnographic research.

Walton, S. (2015) ‘Re-envisaging Iran Online: Photblogs and the Ethnographic “Digital-Visual Moment’’’ in Ryzova, L. (Ed.) Special Issue: Critical Histories of Photography in the Middle East, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communications (MJCC), Brill. Walton, S. (forthcoming 2016): ‘Being there, where?’ Designing digital-visual methods for moving with/in Iran’ in Salazar, N., Elliot, A., and Norum, R., (Eds.), Fielding challenges, challenging the field: Methodologies of mobility, Berghahn Books. Walton, S. (forthcoming 2016), 'Photographic Truth in Motion: The Case of Iranian Photoblogs', Royal Anthropological Institute. Online Open Access.

Photography, media and social change, digital-visual anthropology (theory and research methods), documentary practices, everyday aesthetics, popular visual culture, collaborative and participatory ethnographic research methods