Caroline Merrifield

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Caroline Merrifield is a cultural anthropologist studying food provisioning, farming, and the environment in China. Her research addresses questions about living well with others, both strangers and kin, in contexts of social and ecological disruption. Her first book project, Troubled Plenty: Sourcing Good Food in China, explores the politics of taste and trust in China’s growing alternative food movement. 

Caroline received her PhD from Yale University in 2018, and her A.B. from Harvard College in Social Studies in 2010. She is based in New York, and has also taught at Yale and NYU.   

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

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