Sarah Milne is a Senior Lecturer in the Resources, Environment & Development group at Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University.

Sarah studies natural resource struggles and environmental intervention, particularly when it comes to community-based conservation; resource rights initiatives; and market mechanisms for conservation like Payments for Environmental Services and Reducing Emissions from Forest Degradation and Deforestation. Most of her research is focused on Cambodia, where she has been active as a conservationist, ethnographer, and advocate since 2002.

Sarah is interested in the politics and practice of biodiversity conservation as observed through project ethnography. She is currently completing the monograph about a high-profile international conservation project in the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia. This work builds upon her extensive experience as a practitioner focusing on conservation and development issues in Cambodia, where she has worked for the United Nations Development Programme, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Conservation International.

New research from 2018 will look at ‘Rupture’, which is a way of exploring the social and political upheavals that result from major environmental changes, especially in relation to hydropower dams in mainland Southeast Asia.