Jonathan Isham Ph.D.
Department of Economics and Program in Environmental Studies
Middlebury College, Middlebury VT 05753
802-443-3238

(Updated December 2007)

For the last several years, my collaborative work with Middlebury students and others has focused on building the climate movement, as summarized at the ''What Works' project. Based on this work, Island Press published in June 2007 Ignition: What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement, which I co-edited with Sissel Waage. I currently serve on advisory boards for Focus the Nation, Climate Counts, and the Vermont Governor’s Commission on Climate Change.  I am also a volunteer leader for Vice President Gore’s Climate Project and an advisor to the Presidential Climate Action Project and 1Sky. Some of the media coverage of this work can be found on the links page.

In collaboration with many Middlebury students, I have integrated service learning into my economics and environmental studies courses. A recent project that came out of this approach is Brighter Planet, which launched its first product in November 2007. My most recent winter-term classes here at Middlebury have been Focus the Nation (2007, with Eban Goodstein), 'Building the New Climate Movement' (2005), and 'The Scientific and Institutional Challenges of Becoming Carbon Neutral' (2003, with Lori Delnegro). Since 2004, I have been a member of the Northern New England Service Faculty Consulting Program. Summaries of leading work by my students can be found on my teaching and research supervision page.

I have co-edited Social Capital, Development, and the Environment with Tom Kelly and Sunder Ramaswamy (Edward Elgar Publications); published articles in Applied Financial Economic Letters, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of African Economies, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Rural Sociology, Society and Natural Resources, Southern Economic Journal, Social Sciences Quarterly, Vermont Law Review, World Bank Economic Review; and World Development; and published book chapters in volumes from Cambridge University Press, The New England University Press, and Oxford University Press.

My academic and professional experience are in environmental economics and economic development. After receiving an A.B. in social anthropology from Harvard College in 1984, I served in the Peace Corps in Benin from 1984 to 1987, under a government program to promote more fuel-efficient cook stoves. After working as a site supervisor in the East Bay Conservation Corps in 1988, I received an M.A from Johns Hopkins University in international economics and social change and development in 1990. I was a full-time consultant to The World Bank from 1990 to 1993, where I co-authored papers on the policy and institutional determinants of project performance and oversaw education and credit projects in Chad and Mali. I completed my Ph.D. in economics at the University of Maryland in 2000, where I specialized in international development and environmental and natural resource economics and also worked as a research associate at the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (The IRIS Center). In the fall of 1999, I joined the Department of Economics and the Program in Environmental Studies at Middlebury as an assistant professor.

In 2005, I was honored to be chosen as the first recipient of the The Marjorie Lamberti Faculty Appreciation Award. In 2006, I was honored to receive Vermont Campus Compact's Engaged Scholar Award. In 2006, I became a tenured associate professor and was appointed the Luce Professor of International Environmental Economics at Middlebury College. During the three-year term of this position, I will be working with colleagues at Middlebury and elsewhere to develop global strategies for building a more hopeful, sustainable future.

A more detailed view of my professional background can be found in my curriculum vitae. And, most interestingly, some pictures of my daughters can be found here.