Melissa Beresford

Associate Professor 
Ph.D. Arizona State University, 2018

Expertise:
Ecological & economic anthropology; water insecurity; resource distribution; social norms; institutional economics; field methods; qualitative data analysis; cross-cultural research


Clark Hall 402G
408-924-4778
melissa.beresford@sjsu.edu Melissa Beresford's CV [pdf]
Google Scholar Page

Melissa Beresford is an anthropologist and research methodologist who investigates how humans get water when it is scarce and unpredictable. Bringing anthropology into conversation with environmental governance, public policy, and interdisciplinary water research, her scholarship shows how communities leverage informal cultural norms and social practices to build adaptive responses to water insecurity—and why those responses matter for sustainability, policy, and the Human Right to Water. 

Beresford is Associate Professor of Anthropology at San José State University and Affiliate Faculty in the Center for Global Health at Arizona State University. Supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, she leads a global research program on moral economies for water: the normative values, practices, and modes of social enforcement through which people distribute and manage water, especially under conditions of scarcity and inequality. Her research is rooted in ethnographic and mixed-methods fieldwork with water insecure communities in California and Arizona. She also leads and participates in international collaborations that bring local ethnographic fieldwork findings from multiple global sites into cross-cultural comparison. This approach generates scholarship that is empirically grounded and theoretically generative across anthropology, environmental social science, and water studies.

Beresford is also a leader in methodological innovation and scholarly field-building. She serves as Vice Chair of the Water Insecurity Community of Practice (WISE-CP, formerly HWISE-RCN), Senior Editor of the Human Water section of WIREs Water, Associate Editor of Field Methods, and co-directs the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (NSF CAMP). Across these roles, she helps shape research agendas, mentor new generations of scholars, and build the intellectual infrastructure for rigorous, collaborative, and publicly relevant social science. 

In addition to her research and editorial leadership, Beresford is an award-winning teacher and mentor committed to training students in hands-on, high-impact research. At San José State, she directs the Culture, Economy, and Environment training laboratory, where students gain experience in research design, field methods, data analysis, and team-based inquiry. Her teaching and mentorship are rooted in the belief that excellent scholarship and inclusive training go hand in hand—and that anthropology has a vital role to play in addressing urgent global challenges.