Melissa Burch

My scholarship and community work focuses on the experiences of former prisoners and people with criminal records, with an emphasis on how social hierarchies based in race, class and gender are reproduced through processes of criminalization and punishment. The goal of my scholarship is to shed light on dynamics of persistent inequality and where possible, to produce insight that may be of use to people who are working to challenge those dynamics. 

I am currently developing my first book manuscript, tentatively titled Navigations: Hiring and Job Seeking in the Criminal Records Complex. The study analyzes how employers, criminalized job seekers and advocates navigate criminal records in the hiring process.

Research Areas of Interest:

Race, gender and inequality; criminalization and punishment; prisoner reentry and criminal records; labor market discrimination; urban ethnography; activist scholarship

Awards:

• 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.