Christina Riggs

Professor Christina Riggs is a leading historian of visual culture and photography at Durham University, affiliated with the Department of History. Her work critically explores the intersections of archaeology, colonialism, and museum practices, particularly in the context of ancient Egypt and North Africa. She is renowned for her research on the Tutankhamun excavation and its photographic archive.

• Professor of History of Visual Culture, Durham University
• Former Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford
• Author of Photographing Tutankhamun (2019) and Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century (2021)
• Recipient of British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, and AHRC funding

Trained as an archaeologist and Egyptologist, Riggs began her career curating Egyptian antiquities and later transitioned into art history and visual culture. Her research interests span the history of photography, museum studies, colonial and imperial history, and the materiality of photographic archives. She employs interdisciplinary approaches from anthropology and the history of science to interrogate how visual culture shapes historical understanding.

Her recent publications reflect a critical engagement with digital heritage, including digital colorization and the ethics of archival representation. The 15 most recent articles show a consistent focus on photography in archaeology, colonial legacies, museum display, and the politics of visual knowledge production. Themes of erasure, affect, materiality, and decolonial re-evaluation recur across her work.

Scientific Awards and Honors:

• Evans-Pritchard Lecturer, All Souls College, Oxford (2012)
• First runner-up, BKFS Book Prize for Unwrapping Ancient Egypt (2015)

Riggs actively supervises postgraduate research students working on topics in photographic history, cultural heritage, and Egyptology. She has led research projects funded by the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her current work includes developing a 'counterarchive' of archaeology in Luxor with Heba Abd el-Gawad and a new project on colonial photographic archives using the Sudan Archive at Durham University. She is also involved in collaborative work on the ethics and politics of heritage display and digital reconstruction.