Jenny R. Isaacs, Ph.D.

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Academic website: www.jennyrisaacs.com

Biography

Dr. Jenny R. Isaacs serves as Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. Her research and teaching are positioned at the intersection of nature, techno-science, and politics. She is a political ecologist and animal geographer who critically studies the science and politics of biodiversity conservation and wildlife management, across borders, cultures, space, and scale. Her recent conservation research focuses on controversial state campaigns and technologies to manage endangered, migratory, highly mobile, nuisance, and invasive species. Dr. Isaacs completed her Ph.D. in Geography at Rutgers University, her M.A. in Sustainability Studies at Ramapo College, and earned a B.A. in English and a B.M. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Dr. Isaacs currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Buffalo Field Campaign in West Yellowstone, Montana – an Indigenous-founded and co-led wild bison advocacy group, and the Executive Board of The American Association of Geographers’ Animal Geographies Specialty Group. She also works as Associate Editor for the ‘Political Animals’ section of the peer-reviewed journal Society & Animals.  Her professional conservation work has included service with The National Park Service, The United Nations, The Wildlife Conservation Society, The New Jersey Audubon, the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, and Educational Testing Services in Princeton, NJ.  Before working in higher education, she worked as an outdoor educator and a state-certified high school teacher of English and the Performing Arts in Boston and New York City.

At Rutgers, Jenny coordinates student participation in bison conservation outside Yellowstone Park for the Buffalo Field Campaign, and she places coastal environmental management volunteers with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, the NJ DEP Conservation Corps, and more.  She is a member of the Critical AI and Archipelagoes Faculty Working Groups on campus, and she recently represented Rutgers as an accredited observer at the United Nations 15^th Biodiversity Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal.

Research:

Dr. Isaacs’ research investigates how, why, when, and where conservation professionals act as stewards and managers of life. Specifically, she critically examines how and why certain places and forms of life are controlled and receive protection while others are deemed less worthy and deserving of eradication. Drawing on qualitative social science methods including ethnographic fieldwork, critical theory, and mapping, she documents the many site-specific reasons for land use disputes and human-animal conflicts, noting environmental histories and other factors that result in local support for or resistance to state management of protected areas and species. Attending to multiple scales of analysis, combining insights from many disciplines, she considers how species and their habitats may be more equitably and sustainably managed using participatory, community-based approaches.

In places of local struggle between animals, residents, and the state over resource use, such as the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the Delaware Bay, Dr. Isaacs and her students examine the politics, discourses, and multi-scalar organization of conservation interventions, focusing on how the state responds to unruly expressions of animal agency and local blowback. She is currently conducting and supervising research with Undergraduate students on three specific biosecurity and environmental governance campaigns: 1) the ambitious, hemisphere-wide effort to protect endangered, long-distance migratory ‘red knots’ (Calidris canutus rufa) along the Western Atlantic coast, within the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network; 2) a controversial Mid-Atlantic state campaign to enroll the public in the violent eradication of the invasive spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula); and 3) state, federal, and Indigenous co-management of wild buffalo (Bison bison bison) in and outside of Yellowstone National Park with Native tribes.

Recent Publications

Doyel, Jackson James, Maya Lee, Ashton Nagasuru, Fern Tatum, Richard G. Lathrop, and Jenny Isaacs. (2025). “Wildlife-vehicle risk assessment along Yellowstone’s western boundary: Implications for ecological connectivity and road safety” in the Journal for Nature Conservation (June 2025). 10.1016/j.jnc.2025.126981

Urbanik, Julie, Jenny R. Isaacs, David Tovar, and William Lynn. (2025). Chapter 2 “Engineering in a Multispecies World: Animal Geographies, Ethics, and Place”, in Rosalyn Berne (Ed) Animals, Ethics, and Engineering. Jenny Stanford Publishing (Routledge).

Otruba, Ariel, and Jenny R. Isaacs. (2025). “More-than-human Geographies” in Sydney Calkin and Cordelia Freeman (Eds) Handbook of Feminist Political Geography. deGruyter Publishing. (Forthcoming)

Isaacs, Jenny R. and Otruba, Ariel. (2021). Chapter 2: “Animality/Coloniality: COVID-19 and the Animal question” in Hovorka et al (Eds), A Research Agenda for Animal Geographies.  p. 39-53. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. 

Isaacs, Jenny R. (2020). “Conservation Archipelago: Protecting Long-Distance Migratory Shorebirds along the Atlantic Flyway ” in Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations. Eds. Michelle Stephens and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel. “Rethinking the Island” Series. p. 241-258. Rowman & Littlefield 

Isaacs, Jenny R. (2020).”More-than-human geographies”. International Encyclopedia of Geography. Wiley-AAG. 

Isaacs, Jenny R. (2019). “The Bander’s Grip: Reading Zones of Human-Shorebird Contact.” For Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 2(4) p. 732-760. 

Isaacs, Jenny R, and Ariel Otruba. (2019). Guest Editor and First Author: Introduction to the Special Theme Issue “More-than-human Contact Zones”. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.).  2 (4), 697-711.