Melanie Samson is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. Before academia, she worked in South African trade unions and for NGOs on women’s and informal workers’ struggle for justice. Her research arises out of and contributes to her political work with reclaimer (‘waste pickers’) organisations. Melanie's academic work focuses on the political ecology of reclaiming, the production of value by non-wage workers, and reclaimers’ struggles to redress gendered racial capitalism and achieve a just transition.