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 understanding processes of ‘resourcification’ (the making of resource commodities from nature), 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.