Micah F. Morton

Originally from Philadelphia, I am a cultural anthropologist with expertise in political anthropology, ecological anthropology, and religious studies. My work specifically focuses on borders and transnationalism, state‐minority relations, social movements, religious and spiritual ecologies, religion and politics, ethnicity and nationalism, and the global Indigenous Peoples' movement.

Geographically, I work in Mainland Southeast Asia and its borderlands with southwest China. My research further examines various dimensions of the sociocultural impacts of China's rise on Southeast Asia. I have also conducted work at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where Indigenous activists from around the world gather each spring for the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).

At NIU, I hold a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.

Selected Publications

Book: Morton, M. F. (2025). Enchanted Modernities: Ancestral Vitalizations in the Upper Mekong. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Morton, M.F. (2025). “From blood to fruit: Transcosmogenerational modernities in Akha Worlds of the Upper Mekong.” Anthropology and Humanism, 50(1), 1-15
Morton, M. F. (2023). “Stoking the flames of ethnic politics?: Translating Indigeneity into post/neo-colonial Myanmar/Burma.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 38(3), 321–350.
Morton, M. F. (2023). “The Buffalo Skin Written Word: The cultural politics of orality and the written word in mainland Southeast Asia.” South East Asia Research, 31(1), 1–18.
Morton, M. F. (2023). “Multiculturalism from below: Indigeneity and the struggle for recognition in Thailand.” Journal of Anthropological Research, 79(1), 3–30.
Morton, M. F. with Eric Jones. (2022). “Crypto‐Nationalism in the Akha World of the Upper Mekong Region w/Micah Morton.” Southeast Asia Crossroads Podcast, NIU Center for Southeast Asian Studies, February 20.
Wang, J. & Morton, M. F. (2020). “Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Shifting State‐Society Relations and Emerging Resource Frontiers in China's Southwest Borderlands.” Asian Ethnology, 79(2), 333–355.
Morton, M. F. & Baird, I. G. (2019). “From Hill Tribes to Indigenous Peoples: The Localization of a Global Movement in Thailand.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 50(1), 7–31.
Morton, M. F. (2017). “Reframing the Boundaries of Indigeneity: State‐based ontologies and assertions of distinction and compatibility in Thailand.” American Anthropologist, 119(4), 684–696.
Morton, M. F. (2017). “The Rising Politics of Indigeneity in Southeast Asia.” ISEAS Trends, 14/2017.
Morton, M. F. (2017). “Indigenous Peoples’ Shifting Engagements with the Thai State.” IIAS Newsletter, 78, Autumn 2017: 17.
Morton, M. F. (2017). “Indigenous peoples work to raise their status in a reforming Myanmar.” ISEAS Perspective, 33, 22 May 2017.
Morton, M. F. (2016). “The Indigenous peoples’ movement in Thailand expands.” ISEAS Perspective, 68, 16 December 2016.
Morton, M. F., Wang, J., & Li, H. (2016). “Decolonizing Methods: Akha Articulations of Indigeneity in the Upper Mekong Region.” Asian Ethnicity, 17(4), 580–595.
Morton, M. F. (2015). “‘All Akha are Hani, but not all Hani are Akha’: State‐minority articulations of the ‘nation’ in the Sino‐Southeast Asian borderlands.” Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, 7, 37–57.
Morton, M. F. (2013). “‘If you come often, we are like relatives; if you come rarely, we are Like strangers’: Reformations of Akhaness in the Upper Mekong Region.” ASEAS – Austrian Journal of South‐East Asian Studies, 6(1), 29–59.
Morton, M. F. (2012). “Aqkaq Tseir Kaq Ti Kaq Ma – Ten Akha Are United as One?” Center for Global Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison. (Article and short‐film production)
Morton, M. F. (2010). “Negotiating the Changing Space of ‘Zomia’: A Preliminary Discussion on the Role of Language in Akha Identitarian Politics.” Rian Thai: International Journal of Thai Studies, 3, 97–133.
Morton, M. F. & Thomas‐Smith, E. L. (2009). “Talk to the people on the streets, NOT the people in the suites”: Reflections on Collaborations with ‘Mr. Black’.” Collaborative Anthropologies, 2, 147–176.