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Curriculum Vitae   |   HMC Center for Environmental Studies 
Comparative Environmental Politics and Policy   |   Contact Information

Assistant Professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy

My research and teaching focus on global environmental politics, with a special interest in biodiversity conservation and environmental policy in developing countries. At the broadest level, I am interested in how different societies around the world respond to environmental problems. This is the subject of a new book, Comparative Environmental Politics, that I am co-editing with Stacy VanDeveer of the University of New Hampshire, to be published by MIT Press in 2008.

My previous book, Environmental Leadership in Developing Countries (MIT Press 2001), analyzes “why things sometimes go right” in tropical conservation – specifically, how Costa Rica and Bolivia emerged as conservation leaders, and the implications for theories of policy change in the developing world.  Other research interests include transnational social movements, social science research methods, environmental foreign policy, and institutional resilience.

At Harvey Mudd I direct the Center for Environmental Studies, a multidisciplinary venture promoting innovative research and teaching on environmental problems. Before arriving at HMC in 2003, I was a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.  While in Washington I also served as founding director of a new policy program at RARE Conservation. From 1999-2001 I was on the faculty at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. I have served as a research consultant to The World Bank and Conservation International and previously held positions with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Pesticide Action Network and the United States Peace Corps (Liberia).