Kelsey Jack

Kelsey Jack is an associate professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of the Poverty Alleviation Group at the Environmental Market Solutions Lab (emLab). Kelsey serves as a member of IGCC’s steering committee and is a member of IGCC’s working group on climate change and security. She conducts research at the intersection of environmental and development economics, with a focus on how individuals, households, and communities decide to use natural resources and provide public goods. Much of her research uses field experiments to test theory and new policy innovations.

She has conducted research in numerous countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and has ongoing work in South Africa, India, Ghana, Zambia and Niger. She joined the Bren School at UC Santa Barbara after seven years as an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Tufts University and a postdoc position at MIT, with the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) at J-PAL. She holds a bachelors degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University. Before graduate school, she spent two years in Lao PDR working for IUCN.