Rate My Professor Melissa Caldwell

Melissa Caldwell is Professor of Anthropology in the Social Sciences Division at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned a Ph.D. and A.M. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University, an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Indiana University, and a B.A. in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Tennessee. As Senate Vice Chair of the UCSC Academic Senate and founder of the UCSC Design Anthropology Fab Lab, she holds key leadership positions. Caldwell previously served as Editor-in-Chief of Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, advancing scholarship in food-related anthropology.

Her expertise covers Russia, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, including poverty and welfare, charity and philanthropy, social welfare and humanitarianism, religious charity, food politics, gardening and summer cottages, socialism and postsocialism. Research topics encompass daily life in postsocialist Europe, ethnography of Russia, changing social welfare systems, care work and compassion ethics, interfaith collaborations and faith-based assistance, food practices in late and postsocialist societies, dacha leisure and gardening, human rights and anti-discrimination in Russia, and Russian-African relations. Thematic areas include poverty and inequality, social justice, international development, anthropology of food, consumption, memory, and trauma. With over two decades of ethnographic research in Russia and postsocialist Europe since the early 1990s, and recent work in Hong Kong and the United States, Caldwell investigates how everyday compassion evolves into activism addressing food poverty, racial discrimination, gender inequalities, and differences in care for animals versus humans. Major publications are Not by Bread Alone: Social Support in the New Russia (University of California Press, 2004), Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia's Countryside (University of California Press, 2011), and Living Faithfully in an Unjust World: Compassionate Care in Russia (University of California Press, 2017), the latter drawing from 20 years observing Moscow's faith communities filling post-Soviet welfare voids by providing meals, shelter, and counsel to the vulnerable. She received the 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award (Golden Apple Award) from the UCSC Division of Social Sciences for outstanding undergraduate teaching.