Professor Caldwell examines the politics of poverty, social welfare, care and intimacy in Russia through ethnographic research in Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside (California 2011). Her new research is on Russian-African assistance and development relations in the twentieth century. She also studies changing food practices in the postsocialist world.
Melissa L. Caldwell is a Professor of Anthropology at UCSC, and Co-Director for the UCMRP on Studies of Food and the Body.