Rolf Jensen

Rolf Jensen led the SATA Vietnam program in Spring 2012 and again in 2018. He was the director of the fifth SATA Vietnam in Spring, 2006, teaching three courses: Economics of the Informal Sector in Vietnam and The Political Economy of Post-War Vietnam with Professor Don Peppard, which gave students background in the recent economic history of Vietnam and involved them in empirical research about the informal sector in Hanoi. He also taught a Political Economy seminar. He was also a director of SATA Vietnam 2003.

Jensen's research was conducted in Hanoi in the summer of 2006 following the SATA Vietnam program, when he continued in-depth interviews of eight migrant roving street vendors whose life histories formed the basis of a book co-written with Professor of Economics Don Peppard of Connecticut College and Vu Thi Minh Thang of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vietnam University. Research continued when Professor Thang visited the Connecticut College campus as a visiting research fellow that fall. The book, "Women on the Move: Hanoi’s Migrant Roving Street Vendors," appeared during the winter of 2013-14.

As senior research scientist with the Center for Research on Economic Development of the University of Michigan, Jensen headed socio-economic impact studies in Guinea: a long term study of three dams that were proposed for construction in the Guinea portion of the Gambia River Basin with a socioeconomic team in Guinea, Senegal and Gambia in 1984, 1985, and in 1985, he designed and implemented a rapid reconnaissance survey of eight villages for the Tindo Research Center in the Faranah region of Guinea. Other economic research projects were conducted in Mali and as a senior Fulbright Fellow in 1994-1995 at the University of Conakry, Guinea, Jensen conducted field research on the rural economy of the Fouta Djallon region, including the traditional technology of iron production and producing a documentary film on the attempt of one village's attempt by ironworkers to reproduce the technology about fifty years after it had disappeared from the region.

Recent publications include:

"Food-buying Habits in Hanoi," co-authored with Don M. Peppard, Jr., in Sojourn: The Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 2007;

"Roving Street Sellers in Hanoi: A Look at the Urban Informal Sector," in Vietnam's Socio-Economic Development, Winter 2000, written with Don M. Peppard, Jr.;

"Iron Production Technology in the Fouta Djallon Region of Guinea," Nyame Akuma - Bulletin of the Society of Africanist Archeologists, 1997.

Visit the economics department website.

Majoring in Economics.