Keith Barney has conducted research on the changing geographies of environment and development, and natural resource policy in Southeast Asia since 1999, including fieldwork in Lao PDR, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. His interests lie at the intersections between political ecology, economic geography, and agrarian change. He is particularly interested in resource-making and its articulation with property rights and livelihoods, territorialisation, market governance, state-building, and systems of authoritarian rule.

From 2003, Keith’s primary focus for fieldwork and research has been in the endlessly fascinating country of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Laos also offers a particular geographical window for studying broader regional and global processes of political-economic and environmental transformation.

Keith is currently serving as the Head of Department for the Crawford School’s Resources Environment & Development (RE&D) Group. He is also an ANU Southeast Asia Institute working committee member, and an Associate Editor of Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies journal.