About Julie Morley

Julie Morley seeks to co-create better futures for many species (including humans) through stories about positive change in the face of challenges.

My work as an ornithographer, and doctoral work investigating the corvid-human relationship, awakened me to the need for positive narratives around sharing space with other species. I also became aware of how the restoration, healing, and continued health of  watersheds and wetlands, lakes, rivers, and oceans…all depends upon healthy multispecies relations.

My work began with birds, and birds always play a significant role in ecosystems. They also depend upon the health of ecosystems. A world without birds would not be a very liveable world for many creatures.

Photographing birds allows me to attune to them, connect with them, and understand their lives better. My images are meant to convey their cultures, personalities and subjectivity to humans. My hope is that humans are now awakening to more-than-human worlds, and that this will change the way we relate to other species. Changing the quality of our relationships with other species can support and regenerate our planetary systems.

My doctoral  research focused on the corvid-human relationship, specifically between corvids—crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and ravens (Corvus corax)—and humans.

“Photographing birds allows me to attune to them, connect with them, and understand their lives better.”

Current research reveals that crows are highly intelligent and culturally complex. They mate for life, recognize faces, and have been known to bring gifts to those who feed them! (I have experienced this, myself.)

I am the founder of Multispecies Media, an author, a multispecies scholar, and an ornithographer. My dissertation (read for free here: Crow Cosmopolitics), focuses on the complex relationship between corvids and humans, and inquired into co-existential shared placemaking. My book, Future Sacred: The Connected Creativity of Nature, combines cultural criticism, history, philosophy and complexity theory to describe a radical approach to rethinking our future.

I hold a PhD in Multispecies Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, an MA in Transformative Leadership from California Institute of Integral Studies. I did my undergraduate work in Classics at University of Southern California and Columbia University. I live in Montecito, CA, with my human and more-than-human family.