• International political economy
• International economic development
• Political economy of post-war Vietnam

Rolf Jensen 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 gives students background in the recent economic history of Vietnam and involves them in empirical research about the informal sector in Hanoi. He also is teaching a Political Economy Seminar .

He was a director of SATA Vietnam 2003, from January through May of 2003.

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 vllages 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 tecnology about fifty years after it had disappeared from the region.

Recent publications include "Roving Street Sellers in Hanoi: A Look at the Urban Informal Sector," in Vietnam's Socio-Economic Developpment, Winter 2000, written with Don M. Peppard, Jr., and "Iron Production Technology in the Fouta Djallon Region of Guinea," Nyame Akuma - Bulletin of the Society of Africanist Archeologists, 1997.

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