Keith Barney is a Human Geographer, joining the Resources, Environment & Development (RE&D) Department at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy in 2012. Over the last 25 years, Keith has been continuously engaged with environment and development challenges in rural Southeast Asia. Keith’s scholarly work draws on theoretical approaches from political ecology, resource and economic geography, and agrarian change, with sector specialisations on forestry, land, water, energy, and mining governance. Based on extended, multi-scaled case study research and detailed ethnographic fieldwork, Keith traces changing programs of natural resource management and livelihood production in Southeast Asia.

Keith’s recent publications have examined the articulations between natural resources and extractive development, state power, regime durability, macro-economic development and sovereign debt in socialist Laos.

He has also conducted recent fieldwork in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia on new rural commodity systems- small-scale gold mining and edible birds nest production.

Keith has been involved in numerous collaborative research efforts with funding support by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

At the Crawford School of Public Policy, Keith enjoys all aspects of academic work, across research, teaching, supervision, and service, including as Head of the RE&D Department from 2022-2024. He teaches Asia-Pacific Environmental Conflicts and Research Proposal.

Primary PhD supervisor for:

• Zarin Chaity

PhD supervisory panel for:

• Bimo Satrio
• Joseph (Jed) Alegado
• Ananda Devkota