Christopher Mele, PhD is Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor of Geography at UB. His research interests include: post-custodial archiving of community-sourced knowledge; racialized place narratives and urban policy discourses; the geography of racial exclusion; critical gentrification and displacement; and neoliberal urbanism.

Prof. Mele has been awarded a NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication (2022), a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2014), a Fulbright at the University of Hong Kong (2004-2005), and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (2003-2004). He will be a Research Fellow at the Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility at Swarthmore College in 2022.

• PhD, New School for Social Research, New York, 1994

• Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City. New York University Press, 2017.
• Race, Space, and Exclusion: Segregation and Beyond in Metropolitan America (edited with Robert Adelman) Routledge, 2015.
• “The Strategic Uses of Race to Legitimize ‘Social Mix’ Urban Redevelopment.” Social Identities, 2018.
• “Neoliberalism, Race, and the Redefining of Urban Redevelopment.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2013.
• The Urban Sociology Reader, 2nd edition (edited with Jan Lin). Routledge, 2012.
• Selling the Lower East Side: Real Estate, Culture and Resistance in New York City University of Minnesota Press, 2000.