Melissa Burch

I am an anthropologist whose research and community work focuses on the experiences of people with criminal convictions in the United States, with an emphasis on how social hierarchies and inequalities are maintained and reproduced through processes of criminalization and punishment. My forthcoming book explores the discriminatory use of criminal records in the southern California job market.

My scholarship seeks pivot points between academia and on-the-ground work. I direct the Afterlives of Conviction Project, which aims to aims to deepen understanding of the lived experience of criminalization and make scholarly data and concepts available to organizers, educators, and policymakers in engaging and useful ways. 

Research Areas of Interest:

Race and racism;  criminalization; social inequality; prisoner reentry; criminal records; labor markets; urban ethnography; activist scholarship

Awards:

• 2020 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship
• 2017 Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Engaged Anthropology Grant.
• 2016  Ford Foundation. Honorable Mention Dissertation Writing Fellowship Competition.
• 2014 Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Dissertation Research Grant.
• 2013 University of Texas, Austin. Graduate Thematic Fellowship. 
• 2012 University of Texas, Austin Community Engagement Center. Social Justice Institute, Activist Research Grant Initiative 
• 2011 University of Texas, Austin. Graduate Diversity Fellowship.