Dr. Jenny Hodbod

Profile

I joined SRI as a Lecturer of Environment and Development in May 2022 and was promoted to Associate Professor in September 2024. My research explores the creation the resilient and equitable food systems – environmentally and economically sustainable food systems that can feed a growing global population and support their wellbeing whilst adapting to security threats such as climate change, changing preferences, and economic shocks.

To integrate these components, I utilize environmental social science and political ecology methods within an integrative research design for investigating human-environment interactions – resilience assessment. Taking this perspective allows me to investigate impacts across multiple scales, to highlight all impacts – intended or not – for all actors. I use the theory of adaptive cycle and panarchy to explore longitudinal resilience dynamics, along with applied resilience practice to test and disseminate potential solutions in food systems. To support impact, I collaborate with members of key research and engagement organizations, academics from multiple disciplines and universities, local and national governments, non-profits, and smallholder and commercial producers.

Prior to joining SRI I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University (2016-2022), a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, and a PhD student in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia.

Responsibilities

• Programme Leader - MSc Environment and Development
• Module Leader - SOEE5010M Research Methods
• Research Cluster Co-Lead - Life and Land

Research interests

I have created a resilience assessment toolbox which has been applied to a range of urban and rural food systems. The majority of my research is in rural dryland systems, addressing issues of environmental degradation and food insecurity in these regions by exploring balances between competing land use strategies – livestock, arable agriculture, conservation – to improve the resilience of these fragile landscapes. I have a long-term research program in Ethiopia in the Omo-Turkana Basin, with ongoing development and research programs with colleagues in the Omo-Turkana Research Network, which I co-lead. I also have multiple active research projects in US rangeland systems, including leading the wellbeing and resilience analyses within the $19 million project “Metrics, Management, and Monitoring: An Investigation of Pasture and Rangeland Soil Health and its Drivers”.

Additionally, I am particularly interested in using my resilience practice to further develop resilience theory with respect to equity and to operationalize resilience concepts such as tipping points, leverage points, the adaptive cycle and panarchy.

• Biodiversity and Community Resilience in the Omo Valley (BIOM) Alliance

Qualifications

• PhD, Environmental Social Science, University of East Anglia
• MRes, Environmental Social Science, University of East Anglia
• MSci, Environmental Geoscience, University of Bristol

Professional memberships

• Resilience Alliance
• International Association of Society and Natural Resources

Student education

I contribute to teaching broadly in the areas of sustainability, food systems, and environment and development via the delivery of lectures, seminars and workshops, design and marking of assessments, and supervision of undergraduate and MSc dissertations. 

Research groups and institutes

• Sustainability Research Institute
• Environment and Development

Current postgraduate researchers

• Amelia Browne