Sarah Milne

Sarah Milne is an Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, specializing in the Resources, Environment & Development group. Her research focuses on the political ecology of natural resource management, particularly in Southeast Asia, with a long-term engagement in Cambodia since 2002. She investigates community-based conservation, resource rights interventions, and emerging carbon markets through frameworks like REDD+ and Payments for Environmental Services.

Her work combines ethnographic fieldwork at Cambodia’s forest frontier with transnational policy analysis, addressing intersections between state-society relations, corruption, and livelihood dynamics in conservation. She has led grants from Wenner-Gren Foundation, Australian Research Council, and DfID, focusing on agrarian change, forest carbon governance, and land-use conflicts in tropical regions.

• 2015-2016: Wenner-Gren Foundation Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship for ethnographic monograph on Cambodian conservation
• 2012-2015: Co-investigator on ARC Discovery grant analyzing forest carbon political ecology
• 2013-2014: Co-led DfID-funded agrarian change project in Cambodia/Indonesia
• 2010-2013: ACIAR grant on deforestation governance and land tenure

Her publications examine carbon commodification, land rights struggles, and smallholder deforestation economics, blending anthropology, environmental policy, and comparative development.