ABOUT

Hello! I am Shelly Annette Biesel, a cultural anthropologist with expertise in environmental anthropology. I have over a decade of experience in collaborative, community-based, ethnographic research and applied projects. Using a range of qualitative methods, I investigate how marginalized communities experience and confront ecological harms, especially environmental injustices and dispossession. I have collaborated with coal mining communities in Appalachia, small farming and artisanal fishing communities in Brazil, and Indigenous populations in the Northeastern United States.

My work advances understanding of the connections between environmental justice struggles in the Americas and how ecological crises compound social inequities related to race, gender, class, indigeneity, and other factors. 

I am a Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2025) at the National Park Service’s Offices of Tribal and Cultural Affairs and Native American Affairs in the Northeast Region. I am also an Affiliate Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Maine, where I work with Dr. Darren Ranco. In 2023, I received my doctorate in Cultural Anthropology and a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Georgia, where I was based in the Humans and Environmental Change Lab. I am a proud first-generation college student, a Fulbright Scholar, and a founding member and Digital Projects Coordinator for the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative.