Mentor Areas
Dr. Heather Huntington is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She serves as Executive Director of PDRI-DevLab at Penn. Her research expertise includes land tenure, land administration, natural resource governance, and environmental conservation. She teaches courses on survey methodology and impact evaluations. Dr. Huntington has served as the technical lead on impact and performance evaluations across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She holds a PhD in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Michigan.
Description:
Dr. Huntington has research opportunities for students across the following portfolio of projects:
Zambia- Community Forest Program (CFP)
PDRI-DevLab is partnering with USAID to conduct an endline evaluation with a goal of supporting the Government of the Republic of Zambia’s Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation strategy and incentivizing better forest management. The Community Forest Program seeks to reduce emissions from deforestation through participatory natural resource management of globally biodiverse and significantly forested landscapes.
Ghana- Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana (SDFC)
This research project is a quasi-experimental endline impact evaluation for USAID’s Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana program. This project takes a multi-faceted approach to assist farmers with cocoa farm rehabilitation, farm mapping, and land-use planning in order to reduce deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Other desired outcomes include diversified farmer incomes and improved farmer livelihoods.
Ghana and the Cˆote d’Ivoire - Resilient Ecosystem and Sustainable Transformation of Rural Economies (RESTORE)
The RESTORE project seeks to demonstrate a scalable and regionally replicable model for community-led governance, natural resource management, and biodiversity conservation that aligns with regional and government priorities in cocoa production landscapes in the Guinean forests of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. In partnership with multinational chocolate companies, farmer cooperatives, and local partners, the project aims to establish the technical capacity, policy implementation approaches, and economic incentives to bring cocoa-producing families, governments and private sector together in a joint endeavor to secure improved livelihoods from cocoa farming, socially inclusive additional economic opportunities, increased tree cover and a scalable contribution to national and corporate emission reductions targets.
Zambia - Zambia Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance (EKNA) Data Analytics
High poverty rates in the area that borders the eastern side of Zambia’s Kafue National Park have led to a dependence on natural resources and income from forests for many households. This has contributed to deforestation and forest degradation from wood extraction, agricultural expansion, and fires. This project aims to address these issues by strengthening natural resource compliance and management, improving access to clean water, and developing effective land governance systems in the area.
Colombia - Land for Prosperity(LfP)/Amazon Evaluation
PDRI-DevLab is working with the Government of Colombia and USAID on the implementation of massive cadaster and land property rights pilots in deforestation hotspots in and near the Amazon. The goal of the project is to explore methods that focus on the integration of three thematic areas—licit, sustainable livelihood promotion, land formalization, and environmental conservation, with a particular focus on changing behaviors associated with deforestation and biodiversity conservation.
Uganda - Improvement of Land Governance in Uganda (ILGU)
ILGU’s goal is to increase the productivity and income of small-scale farmers on Mailo land by piloting interventions to strengthen land tenure security. The pilot interventions include land inventories, conflict mediation, and facilitating agreements with landlords while working in coordination with the Government of Uganda.
Preferred Qualifications
This portfolio has a variety of quantitative and qualitative research tasks and can accommodate students with a range of skills and qualifications. Quantitative research tasks focus on survey data analysis and the analysis of GIS data to explore environmental and climate outcomes. For quantitative research tasks, we are especially interested in students who are proficient in R or Stata for data analytics, and experience with GIS and applied econometrics for social science research is highly preferred. Qualitative research tasks focus on the analysis of interviews and focus group transcripts, along with in-depth literature reviews.
Project Website
Learn more about the researcher and/or the project here.
https://pdri-devlab.upenn.edu/projects/land-rights-and-conservation/(link is external)
Details:
Preferred Student Year
First-year, Second-Year, Junior, Senior
Academic Term
Fall, Spring, Summer
I prefer to have students start during the above term(s).Volunteer
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to volunteers.Paid
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to paying students they engage in their research, regardless of their work-study eligibility.Work Study
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to hiring work-study-eligible students.