Melissa M. Valle, Ph.D.

I am currently the Mellon Assistant Professor in Global Racial Justice in both the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. I am also a core faculty member of the Global Urban Studies/Urban Systems Ph.D. program and affiliated faculty with the American Studies program. 

My current book project, Battling for Worth: Race, Recognition and Urban Change on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast, is under contract with Oxford University Press (Global and Comparative Ethnography Series). It is an ethnography exploring how people determine who is worthy of occupying contested space in a gentrifying neighborhood in Cartagena, Colombia. I demonstrate how race, ethnicity, gender, and class are encoded in the value of urban spaces through analyses of micro-level meaning-making practices and structures. I was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student award to Colombia to conduct my ethnographic fieldwork.

I have also completed research on Afro-descendants living in Santiago, Chile, exploring the mechanisms that lead to reduced life chances for marginalized groups and how such groups negotiate stigma perspectives that suggest their identities have been devalued.

Prior to completing my Ph.D., I spent ten years working with youth in various capacities, most recently as a New York City Teaching Fellow on the Lower East Side. I have also worked in the field of public policy and community development in Harlem. I have served on the board of the afrolatin@ forum since 2010. 

My educational journey began in Newark, New Jersey at Babyland Nursery School and led me through East Orange and South Orange/Maplewood public schools.

I believe in the healing power of laughter, that Beyoncé is a global treasure, that I should’ve been in the Guinness Book of World Records for my childhood keychain collection, and that without justice there can be no peace.