Dr. Paxson is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, where she serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Program in History, Anthropology & Science, Technology, and Society. She has researched the production of artisanal cheese in the United States for a decade, with particular interest in understanding how craftwork has become a new source of cultural and economic value within American landscapes of production and consumption. In addition, her work culturally contextualizes regulatory concerns over safety, “quallity” and percieved risk. She is the author of The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America (University of California Press, 2013) as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles on diverse topics related to anthropology and artisanal cheese. She is member of the Editorial Board of the Oxford Companion to Cheese.