Shelly A. Biesel

In the broadest terms, Shelly's research examines equity at the crossroads of economic development and environmental change. A cultural-ecological anthropologist by training, Shelly examines how historic, intersectional inequalities shape social and environmental experiences of development-induced environmental change in rural communities. She has worked with coal-mining communities in rural Appalachia, and with traditional subsistence-based communities in Northeast Brazil. In 2020, Shelly received a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship to study gendered and racialized dimensions of industrial development in coastal Pernambuco, where she partners with the Centro das Mulheres do Cabo, activist Elaine Cristina Salgado Mendonça, and Christine Dabat at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. 
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In addition to being a member of the Humans and Environmental Change Lab in Anthropology, Shelly is earning a certificate in Women and Gender Studies at UGA's Institute for Women's Studies. Shelly also is affiliated with the Latin American and Caribbean Institute (LACSI), where she is a founding student member of UGA's Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative. 

Research interests: environmental justice, feminist political ecology, rural communities, identity (especially race, gender, indigeneity), environmental change, development, media and media literacy, resistance, joy, ethnography, oral history, digital humanities, photovoice

Of Note: 
  • 2020 Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellow, Department of Education
  • 2019 Graduate School Dean's Award for Arts and Humanities
  • 2019 Willson Center Graduate Research Award 
  • 2018 LACSI Summer Research Award 
  • 2017 FLAS Summer Fellowship, Department of Education
  • 2016 FLAS Summer Fellowship, Department of Education
  • 2016 Rhoda Halperin Memorial Award, Society for Economic Anthropology

Selected Recent Publications: 
Biesel, Shelly A. 2021. When disinformation makes sense: Contextualizing the war on coal in Appalachian Kentucky. Economic Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12194

Biesel, Shelly and Donald R. Nelson. 2019. A Importância da ética para a gestão da água. In Adapta: gestão adaptativa do risco climático de seca, pp. 407 - 418. Fortaleza: Expressão Gráfica e Editora.

Public Scholarship: 
Biesel, Shelly A. 2020. "Radical Media Challenges Rural Stereotypes." Anthropology News. 

Athena Co-learning Collective. 2018. "A Femifesto for Teaching and Learning Radical Geography." Antipode Online. 

Biesel, Shelly A. 2015. "New Federal Budget Bill No 'Win' for Kentucky." The Courier Journal.  ​

Education:
​M.A. Anthropology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY
B.A. Anthropology and Studio Art, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Contact Shelly

Email: [email protected]