Regina Birner joined the Development Strategy and Governance Division in September 2004 to lead IFPRI's research program on governance. She is also co-chair of IFPRI's Governance Task Force. Prior to joining IFPRI, she was an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Rural Development at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where her research focused on the analysis of political processes and on decentralization and collaborative governance in natural resource management. Dr. Birner served as Co-chair of the Interdisciplinary Center for Sustainable Development at Göttingen University and as Vice-chair of the German Council for Tropical and Sub-tropical Agricultural Research (ATSAF). She is a German citizen and holds a PhD in Socioeconomics of Rural Development from the University of Göttingen, and a M.Sc. in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Munich-Weihenstephan, Germany.

• Ghana
• Guatemala
• Indonesia
• Sri Lanka
• Thailand
• Vietnam

• Between Conservationism, Eco-Populism and Developmentalism -- Discourses in Biodiversity Policy in Thailand and Indonesia
  Heidi Wittmer and Regina Birner. CAPRi Working Paper 37. 2005.
  (PDF 293K)
• On the Efficient Boundaries of the State - The Contribution of Transaction Costs Economics to the Analysis of Decentralisation and Devolution in Natural Resource Management
  Birner, R. and H. Wittmer. In Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Vol. 22(5) October, pp. 667 - 685. 2004.
• Analyzing Negotiation Approaches in Natural Resource Management - A Case Study of Crop-Livestock Conflicts in Sri Lanka
  Birner, R. In Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Vol. 42 (4): pp. 469-488. 2003.
• Relative Importance and Determinants of Landowners' Transaction Costs in Collaborative Wildlife Management in Kenya: An Empirical Analysis
  Mburu, J., R. Birner and M. Zeller. In Ecological Economics, Vol. 45, pp. 59-73. 2003.
• Using Social Capital to Create Political Capital - How Do Local Communities Gain Political Influence? A Theoretical Approach and Empirical Evidence from Thailand
  Birner, R. and H. Wittmer. In The Commons in the New Millennium, Challenges and Adaptation, ed. by N. Dolsak and E. Ostrom, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, pp. 291-334. 2003.
• Between Market Failure, Policy Failure and "Community Failure": Crop-Livestock Conflicts and Technology Adoption in Sri Lanka
  Birner, R. and H. Gunaweera. In Natural Resource Management: The Role of Property Rights and Collective Action in Developing Countries, ed. by R. Meinzen-Dick, A. Knox, F. Place, and B. Swallow, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 186-206. 2002.