Jesse Ribot joined the Beckman Institute and the Department of Geography as an Associate Professor in November 2008. Dr. Ribot is leading the Strategic Initiative, Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy (SDEP). SDEP is an initiative of the School of Earth, Society and Environment with support by the campus and the Beckman Institute.
Prior to arriving at Illinois, Ribot was a Senior Associate in the Institutions and Governance program at the World Resources Institute (since 1999). He has been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellow, a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and a fellow at the Yale Program in Agrarian Studies. From 1990 to 1994 he lectured on environment and development policy and planning in Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Over the past two decades he has conducted numerous studies for the World Bank and United Nations. Ribot conducts research on: decentralization and democratic local government; natural resource tenure and access; distribution along natural resource commodity chains; and household vulnerability in the face of climate and environmental change. He holds a doctorate from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley.
