Kendra McSweeney

Kendra McSweeney, an associate professor of Geography at The Ohio State University is a "human-environment" geographer. Her interests are in cultural ecology, conservation and development, demography, and land use/cover change.

McSweeney's recent work falls in three broad areas: forests and livelihoods, smallholder response to rapid environmental change, and indigenous population dynamics. These areas all involve exploration of how people who live within extremely dynamic landscapes respond to, and shape, environmental change (discursively, economically, or indirectly through demographic behaviors), and how a better understanding of these processes can inform rural development and conservation policy. An emphasis on field-based data construction runs through all projects.

She has made influential analytical contributions to understanding the socio-ecological dynamics and impacts of drug trafficking through Central America.