Yifan (Flora) He 何一帆

I am an environmental politics scholar focusing on land and natural resource governance in the Global South. I combine rigorous causal inference methods, rich geospatial and remote sensing data, and in-depth qualitative interviews to advance knowledge in three areas: the distributive politics of environmental policy implementation; the social consequences of environmental degradation; and inclusive global conservation policy. My job market paper shows how politicians use deliberate non-enforcement of deforestation as a patronage tool to reward political supporters in Bolivia. I also study the unequal health impacts of gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon, and the environmental, health, and electoral consequences of a slash-and-burn policy in Bolivia. I have received research support from the NSF/APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, the UCSB Chancellor’s Fellowship, and private foundations.

My research has been published in Science, One Earth, World Development, and Global Environmental Change, among others. I have served as a reviewer for various journals including Journal of Public Economics, World Development, Environmental Research Letters, Forest Policy and Economics, and Journal of Development Studies.

I am currently a PhD candidate at the Bren School, University of California, Santa Barbara. I received a Master of Science from the University of Michigan in 2017 and a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Hong Kong in 2015. I speak Mandarin, Hakka, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. I have conducted fieldwork in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, China, Indonesia, and the US. I spend most of my free time wandering in nature looking for wildlife or dancing to Latin music.

You can find my latest CV here. I am on the academic job market in 2024-2025.

To get in touch, please email yifan_he@bren.ucsb.edu.