Melissa Fisher is a cultural anthropologist of work and the built environment. She is on the faculty of Parsons School of Design at the New School. She is also a Visiting Scholar at New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge; an Associate Researcher in the Global Foresight Project based out of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study; and a Senior Advisor focused on workplace culture and design at CFAR Consulting and Coaching Services. She is a frequent consultant, speaker, and contributor to outlets including Work Design Magazine. In 2025 Avuity named Melissa one of the Top 65 CRE and Work Tech Experts to Follow on LinkedIn
Melissa is the author of Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy (Duke University Press) and Wall Street Women (Duke University Press). She is currently working on a book about how architects and other professionals imagine and design post-covid work environments with a focus on equity and justice. Her research has been supported by the Alfred Sloan Foundation, the Laurits Andersen Foundation, and the Social and Economic Research and Policy Institute at Columbia University.
Melissa has held full-time faculty positions at New York University, Georgetown University, and was most recently the Laurits Andersen Professor of Business and Organizational Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She has also held visiting positions at Columbia University, Stockholm University and the European University Viadrina (Germany). Prior to becoming an anthropologist, Melissa worked in and on postmodern dance, performance and graphic design in NYC and as a masters student at Wesleyan University. These experiences trained her to think about ways of connecting people, place, movement, and design. She received her BA in English Cum Laude from Barnard College and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University.
