Kathy Baylis

Bio

Kathy is the Director of emLab’s People & Poverty Program and Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She joined the department after over a decade in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois where she remains adjunct faculty. She earned her Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003, where she specialized in international agricultural policy and trade. In 2001-2002, Kathy was the staff economist in charge of agriculture for the Council of Economic Advisors in the White House, and in the mid-1990s, she worked as Executive Secretary of the National Farmers Union in Canada. Her research empirically evaluates agricultural, conservation, and trade policies and their effect on environmental and food security outcomes. 

Professor Baylis has helped bring in over $30 million in grants, and has supervised over 30 graduate and postdoctoral students. She has published over 70 journal articles and book chapters on agriculture and conservation policy that have appeared in the top field journals in agricultural, environmental, development, and regional economics. She has also co-authored a textbook on U.S. and Canadian agricultural policy, which is used in universities on both sides of the border. When not peering myopically at a computer, she can be found hiking/biking in the woods or paddling in a kayak.

Learn more about Kathy beyond her bio in her emLab Spotlight profile.