Melissa Valle

Dr. Melissa Valle’s ethnographic research explores how people determine who is worthy of occupying contested space in a gentrifying neighborhood in Cartagena, Colombia,  demonstrating how race, ethnicity, gender, and class are encoded in the value of urban spaces through analyses of micro-level meaning-making practices and structures.. Her 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). She earned her PhD in Sociology from Columbia University.

Publications:

• Valle, M.M. (2022). Aping Blackness: Reading and evaluating racialized images in Cartagena, Colombia. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 8(1), 176–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/23326492211057827

• Valle, M.M. (2021). Globalizing the sociology of gentrification. Special Issue: Global South (invited). City & Community, 20(1), 59-70. https://DOI:10.1111/cico.12507

• Valle, M.M. (2019). Burlesquing blackness: Racial significations in Carnival and the carnivalesque on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast. Public Culture, 31(1), 5-20. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-7181814

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• 2023, October 27. Featured guest speaker, “Fireside Chat: ‘Gentrification: A Planetary Conversation’.” Gentrification & Displacement: What Can We Do About It? An International Dialogue. Boston University.

• 2023, April 13. Featured guest speaker, “Negative Space: Street vendors, regional stigma, and the symbolic value of race in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.” Urban Studies Speaker Series. The Urban Studies Institute. Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia.

• 2023, February 9. Featured guest speaker, “Globalizing Gentrification: Lessons from Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.” Global Black Cities Lecture Series. Center for Global Black Studies. University of Miami, Miami, Florida.

Previous Organizations: 

• Princeton School of Architecture/ Public and International Affairs

• Afro-Latin@ Forum

• Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University Journalism School

Accomplishments:

• Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities Fellowship

• The Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation (now The Institute for Citizens & Scholars) Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty

• Fulbright U.S. Student Award Recipient to Colombia

Upcoming Projects:

• Valle, M.M. Battling for Worth: Race, Recognition and Urban Change on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast. Book manuscript in progress. Under contract with Oxford University Press (Global and Comparative Ethnography Series).

Establishing the roles that race and racism play in the development context can impact the quality of life of racialized groups and contribute to the literatures on the intersections of race, space, and dispossession. I am a sociologist of race/ethnicity, culture, and urbanism. My work broadly explores the relationships between racialization and marginalization through qualitative and visual work on urban development in the US and Global South. My work unpacks the roots and consequences of anti-Blackness throughout the African Diaspora.