Academic career
Having completed her doctorate, Morton moved to England to join the Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge as a post-doctoral fellow.[3] In 1991, she was appointed a lecturer at the university and elected a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge.[3] Since 1995, she has been the director of studies in medicine and veterinary medicine at Newnham College.[3][6] In 2005, she was made a Reader in Experimental Neurobiology in the Department of Pharmacology.[7] In 2009, she was appointed Professor of Neurobiology in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience.[8] She is the first New Zealand woman to be appointed to a professorship at Cambridge.[9] From October 2009 to September 2010, she held a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship.[10] In 2015, she was the Visiting Seelye Fellow at the University of Auckland.[2][11]
Research
Morton's current research focuses on "understanding the mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration and on developing strategies to delay or prevent the death of neurones in injured or degenerating brain".[12] She has specialised in Huntington's disease since 1993.[3][2] Having undertaken research into Huntington's using transgenic mice, she moved into using transgenic sheep as a large animal model of Huntington's disease.[10][11]
Morton's research with sheep has also led to an interest in measuring their learning and memory.[6] Her team have been able to teach sheep to choose a familiar face over unfamiliar one when presented with two photographs, which has led to the discovery that sheep can recognise human faces.[13][14]
