Graduate Training

Graduate Student Statement

I like to work with graduate students who share my interests in collective action and environmental governance. In the early stages of their graduate careers, I will generally assign graduate students to work with me on one of my ongoing projects. This allows the student to understand the basic task requirements of a research project, which will hopefully serve them well as they develop a dissertation topic. As they progress towards dissertation stage, I encourage students to either examine unanswered questions within the context of an existing project, or develop/test policy theories in an entirely new context, which could be models, experiments, or field work in some specific environmental policy domain. I also work very closely with graduate students to develop fellowship and grant proposals to support their disseration research.

I welcome inquiries from potential graduate students interested in collaborative management, environmental activism, sustainable agriculture, environmental/land-use planning, conservation and development, or collective action simulations/experiments . All of these topics dovetail nicely with other faculty in Environmental Science and Policy, as well as those involved with the Environmental Policy Analysis area of emphasis within the Ecology Graduate Group. I am also a member of the Human Ecology area of emphasis, where several faculty members share my interest in the evolution of cooperation, and cultural differences in conservation behavior.

Two relatively new areas in which I am taking students is transportation planning and air quality policy. For transportation planning, I will work with students interested in regional collaborative processes, as well as individual choice in the context of transportation collective-action problems. Within air quality policy, students who are interested in policy changes and individual behavior are especially encouraged to apply. Students who work with me in these areas generally are interested in my advice on how to apply policy theories to their area interests, and design quality research projects to test those theories. See the affiliated programs section below for more information.

If you are interested in working with me, send me an email outlining your relevant educational (including any background in economics, political science, statistics)and professional experience (particulary any work in the environmental policy field), and most importantly, the research interests you would have at Davis. Please be as specific as possible about your research interests.

Affiliated Graduate Programs

I take students through the following programs. Many of these programs have graduate fellowships that you should think about applying for:

Ecology Graduate Group

Environmental Policy Analysis Area of Emphasis

Human Ecology Area of Emphasis

Institute for Transportation Studies

Atmospheric Aerosols and Health Program

Current Graduate Students

Patricia Pinho (Graduated 2007; Post-doc in Brazil)

Dynamics and Consequences of Natural Resource Management: Perspectives from Local Fishery Management in the Brazilian Amazon

My research project uses a longitidunal study of social and ecological factors to investigate the great array of rules that local communities have developed in order to cope with common-pool resources in the tropics. A set of conservation strategies developed by the Caboclo community in the central Brazilian Amazon in Silves will be evaluated. Collective actions by the Caboclo have led to a complex ecological zoning system that thrives on the conservation of endangered fish species, Colossoma Macropomun and Arapaima gigas and the floodplain (varzea) ecosystem. As the conservation efforts of Silves were created in response to local concerns and interests, some of the mainstream assumptions that common property regimes and local communities are always obstacles to the protection and sustainable use of a particular resources and the conservation of biodiversity will be challenged. This project will highlights the paradigm shift by looking at local communities in tropical forest not only as a group of users interested in maximizing their gains in a short run, but as a community that is immersed in set of cultural values and attributes that leads to the well suited management of natural resources and species protection.

Jeremy Brooks

Conservation and Development in Bhutan

My interests lie in the human dimensions of conservation and in the underlying motivation for conservation in different societies. I am particularly interested in the debate, and frequent tension, regarding the importance of ethically or socially motivated conservation and market-based or economically motivated conservation. I am conducting my dissertation research in Bhutan hoping to determine the role of social factors in conservation in households and communities with different levels of development and market integration as well as exploring the impacts that development and market integration are having (supporting or eroding?) on conservation norms.

Adam Henry

Collaborative Planning and Policy Networks

My current research focuses on collaborative land-use and transportation planning in California, and applying various theoretical frameworks to explain the success or failure of regional planning efforts. More specifically, I am interested in better understanding belief systems and their role in political conflict, policy-oriented learning, and the use of network analysis for hypothesis testing in the Advocacy Coalition Framework.

Tim Waring

Culture and Sustainability in India

I'm broadly interested in the ways that human culture evolves in relationship with the biotic environment, through both changing institutions and technology. Since human culture is an evolutionary process, it should drive both diversification and optimization of socio-ecological systems. I am currently conducting research in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu on effects of social and ethnic diversity on the provision of sustainable environmental management as a public good. A large literature suggests that ethnic, social and economic diversity can negatively effect the provisioning of public goods. But how does social diversity diminish public goods provision, and what factors influence this relationship? I hope to address these questions with regards to environmental management strategies (communal forest & irrigation management) in the Palni Hills of Tamil Nadu by comparing villages with varying levels of social diversity. I am also studying the ways that this same ethnic diversity influences the ways that individuals relate to each other in simplistic economic situations. To this end I employ behavioral economic games.  Lastly, I also study non-environmentally linked cultural traits. At my field site I document the methods of design and pathways of learning that make up the unique south Indian Kolam tradition.

Lauren Shaw

Farmer Participation in Sustainable Agriculture

Lauren is an Ecology grad student within the Environmental Policy Analysis AOE. She is interested in the behavioral aspects of sustainable agriculture- what makes growers adopt sustainable practices and how can we use networking and policymaking to increase the frequency of sustainable practices. She is working on developing a survey for winegrape growers in Lodi, California to determine what attitudes, behaviors and demographic characteristics predict their participation in sustainability programs and their adoption of sustainable practices.

Lucas Lippert

Cooperation and Integrated Regional Water Management in California