Helena is an agricultural economist with experience working across diverse interdisciplinary research settings in Australia and developing country contexts. Central to her research is understanding what drives and influences private decisions in relation to social goals. Some areas of her applied research include the economics of land degradation in agricultural landscapes, drivers of farmer participation in conservation, and understanding how policy mechanism design can impinge upon social drivers of practice change.

Her current research with the Sustainable Farms project is focused on evaluating farm financial performance under a range of sustainable land management scenarios and understanding the diverse social, economic and human dimensions of land management practice change for achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes at the farm and landscape level.