Jennifer Keahey operates from the tradition of emancipatory social science to identify and address barriers to sustainable and participatory development. With a background in critical agrarian studies and post-authoritarian societies, she conducts research with small-scale producers who are involved in fair and alternative trade initiatives. Her use of qualitative and participatory methods enables her to: (1) culturally situate understanding; (2) open platforms for multi-stakeholder collaboration; (3) interrogate power imbalances; and (4) interpret social change in action. By identifying the capacities that give rise to socially and environmentally responsible development, Keahey's scholarship brings together the discourse on sustainability, global justice and social change.

In 2010, she worked with small-scale rooibos tea farmers in post-apartheid South Africa to co-develop a participatory research, training and networking initiative. As part of her inquiry, Keahey conducted ethnographic fieldwork with a team of community-based farmer leaders, generating in-depth understanding of the issues facing producers in rural coloured (mixed race) areas, including challenges with Fairtrade and organic market access. This work resulted in a ‘participatory commodity networking’ approach to Fairtrade research and producer support. It also established a multi-paradigmatic foundation for sociopolitical analysis.

Keahey also has conducted extensive fieldwork in post-Soviet Latvia. Having first worked in the country as a Peace Corps volunteer, she later returned under a Fulbright grant to examine the impacts of European integration on Latvia's organic farming movement. Her research found significant growth in the number of farms undergoing organic conversion, an influx of food imports that further glutted national organic markets, and a strategic shift in movement identity from organic farming to local food as small-scale farmers struggled to remain competitive in a rapidly changing agricultural economy.

Her current scholarship focuses on the ethics of development, with three article-length manuscripts in progress. The first of these connects the wide-ranging discourse on development ethics to propose a common set of principles for planning, conducting, and evaluating development research across disciplines. The second comprises a systematic review of participatory action research in sustainable development. The third manuscript elucidates the contributions of intersectional, postcolonial, and decolonial feminist theories to global development ethics.

In the near future, Keahey will embark upon a comparative historical book project on the topic of sociopolitical sustainability. Engaging the cases of post-Soviet Latvia and post-apartheid South Africa, "Transformative Societies" will query the role of cultural worldviews in generating democratic social change, with particular focus on the indigenous value systems informing anti-authoritarian resistance movements, national transitions to democracy, and post-authoritarian sustainable development agendas.