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About Barry Shelley

Barry Shelley is completing his doctoral studies in economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and coordinates the MesoAmerica Program of the Political Economy Research Institute’s Natural Assets Project based there. He also teaches the political economy of the environment as an adjunct lecturer at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.

His vocational interests include the links—both intellectual and operational--between research and social movements, between development and environmental economics, between global and local economic forces, and between economic justice and theology. Together with James K. Boyce, Barry recently co-edited a volume entitled Natural Assets: Democratizing Environmental Ownership (Island Press, 2003) that focuses on how natural asset-building strategies can address both poverty and environmental concerns in the U.S. His doctoral dissertation analyzes the potential of related strategies currently being considered by Salvadoran peasant communities.

Barry returned to the U.S. in 1994 after serving for six years in El Salvador with the Mennonite Central Committee, a faith-based organization working with Salvadoran partners in the areas of human rights, health, education and economic development. Before 1988 he worked with U.S. domestic social-change programs: as a community organizer in inner-city Boston, with focuses on affordable housing and jobs programs for youth; in a state-level United Church of Christ position in Massachusetts for youth and outdoor programs; and as the program director of Holden Village, an education/retreat center program in Washington State that emphasizes social and environmental justice. Guided by a biblically grounded conviction that the elements of a just and peaceful world are already in our midst, Barry has actively participated throughout his life in collective efforts to resist injustice and to live into such an alternative community.

Combining his economic skills, activist identity and political experience with his previous studies in theology and ethics (Harvard Divinity School, M.Div., 1985) and public policy (Duke University, B.A., 1975), Barry frequently facilitates participatory “economic literacy” workshops for activists, people of faith, and community development organizations, and speaks on topics integrating faith, the biblical story, economic justice and current economic issues.

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