Shelby Grossman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2016. Shelby's primary research interests are in comparative politics and political economy. Her dissertation explored the politics of property rights in informal, open-air markets in Nigeria.

Other research projects include a study on the political economy of diversified business groups, a project on casual inter-group interactions in the informal economy, and a paper on the politics of non-compliance with polio vaccination in northern Nigeria.