Heather Huntington

Heather Huntington is the executive director of the Penn Development Research Institute-DevLab. Her research interests include land tenure, land administration, natural resource management, as well as governance and accountability.

Huntington has served as the principal investigator on nine evaluation projects over the past five years for USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the United States Institute of Peace. The global reach of her work includes transformational projects in Zambia, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Mongolia, Liberia, Ethiopia, Guinea, and Colombia. Prior to joining DevLab, she served as democracy fellow for USAID, a post-doctoral research fellow for the International Forestry Resources and Institutions research network, and an impact evaluation specialist at The Cloudburst Group. She has published widely on the topic of land use and international development including in journals such as the Journal of Development Economics, Land Use Policy, the Journal of Rural Studies, and PLOS Climate, and has authored numerous policy reports for USAID, the World Bank, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Huntington holds a master’s in Russian and East European studies, a Master of Public Policy, and a PhD in political science and public policy, all from the University of Michigan.