Brittany Ellis

Brittany is a Ph.D. student in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture program. She is interested in 19th- and 20th-century material and visual culture from the Middle East particularly in relation to technological development and legacies of colonialism and imperialism. Her research at MIT thus far has focused on the history of photographic technologies and their use in archaeology and anthropology and their development in the Middle East.

Brittany received a B.A. summa cum laude in Anthropology from Harvard University and an M.Phil. in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology from the University of Oxford as a 2019 Rhodes Scholar. Her research in these programs explored digitization projects in museums, theories and practices of decolonization, and the politics of labor and representation on archaeological excavations. She has worked on archaeological excavations in Macedonia and Jordan as well as at cultural institutions including the Pitt Rivers Museum, the American Center of Oriental Research in Jordan, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. 

Outside of MIT, Brittany serves as a resident tutor at Harvard's Lowell House, where she advises undergraduate students on fellowship and grant applications and helps to run the house's intramural sports program. She loves yoga, rowing, baking, and making ceramics.