In 1987, Professor Beard was an American Field Service exchange student in Makassar, South Sulawesi where she lived with an Indonesian host family and attended public high school. Subsequently, she spent her junior year abroad at Gadjah Mada University and then was a Fulbright Scholar in Yogyakarata. She has also spent time studying or working in Jakarta, Malang, and North Sumatra.

 

Professor Beard's research focuses on the relationship between community-based planning and poverty in the Global South. In Southeast Asia, she has explored these issues in Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. More recently, she has expanded this research to explore the transnational processes that connect the U.S. and Mexico. She has published her research on community-based planning in Indonesia in Development and Change, International Development Planning Review, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Plurimondi, Urban Studies, and World Development.

 

In terms of her professional planning practice, Professor Beard has worked with international development agencies, national ministries, local governments, community-based organizations, and non-governmental organizations. Her work has focused on three areas: (1) building urban research and plannning capacity, (2) poverty alleviation efforts, and (3) monitoring and evaluation. Professor Beard has done this work for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, AusAID, RAND, Mercy Corps, and the Research Triangle Institute. 
 

At Cornell, Beard is an Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and an affiliate of the Southeast Asia Program. She is also an International Faculty Fellow at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (2014-2017), a faculty fellow at the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, and she is a member of the Center for Engaged Learning and Research advisory board.

 

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