Research Interests
My broad research interests are in the fields of environment and development, focusing specifically on policies, programs, and projects designed to reconcile the often conflicting objectives of environmental conservation and socio-economic development, primarily in rural areas of developing countries.
My research examines the processes of policy making, the transition from policy to practice, and the impacts of (and responses to) practice at the local level. As a human-environment geographer, I ground this work primarily in political ecology, but also draw on theory from social studies of science, participatory development / resource management, common property, and environmental values. Thematically, the work has been done in the context of sea turtle conservation (including parks and protected areas, ecotourism, direct harvest) and fisheries, and more recently coastal land use change.
To learn more about particular projects, please follow the links to the right.
I have become increasingly interested in research methods, including the ethics of conducting research with fishers and other resource users (see Silver and Campbell 2005, Shackeroff and Campbell 2007), the realities of conducting field work in developing countries (see Campbell et al 2006), and the challenges associated with interdisiplinary research and teaching (Campbell 2005).