She is currently the Director of the Anthropology Graduate Program. Her research focuses on environment and migration. On the topic of the environment, Haenn considers how small-scale communities (villages and counties) manage their natural resources. Given her area of specialty in southern Mexico, this interest touches on questions of rainforest conservation, sustainable development, environmental justice, multi-culturalism, and the government mechanisms employed to create and implement environmental policy. Her book Fields of Power, Forests of Discontent brings these topics together to describe how conservation programs took root in southern Mexico. As residents of southern Mexico were drawn into international migration, Haenn began to examine the social and environmental effects of international migration. She is currently at work on a book Marriage after Migration:An Ethnography of Five Mexican Woemn.