Gwen Arnold is a public policy PhD candidate in a joint program between the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the IU Department of Political Science. Her concentrations are environmental policy and political theory and methods. She is interested in wetland and water policy; before beginning at IU she edited a wetland policy journal and a book on post-Katrina wetland recovery. She spent three summers as a National Network of Environmental Management Scholars fellow at the US Environmental Protection Agency, doing research on wetland policy, and in 2010 was awarded an EPA STAR fellowship to continue this work. Her dissertation uses multiple methods to explore the determinants of adoption and implementation of rapid wetland assessment tools by state regulators. gbarnold@indiana.edu
Jacob Bower-Bir investigates the introduction of market forces to traditionally public services. Of particular interest are the norms, rules, and institutions that govern those services and are potentially altered or abandoned following market reform. His current research focuses on school choice in American public education, with a special concentration on segregation and student achievement in charter schools. His work on education is part of a broader interest in the distribution of influence and benefits in collective action scenarios. Jacob is conducting additional research on strategic network formation, legislative representation, spatial voting models, and heuristics. jbowerbi@indiana.edu
Laura Bucci is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on the political involvement of traditionally underrepresented groups in American politics. Of specific interest is the way that informal networks or community-based nonprofit organizations can work together with their target population and elected officials to increase rights and other collective benefits. Most recently, she has worked in internal capacity building for grassroots nonprofits. Laura has a BA in Political Science with concentration in Public Administration from Providence College. labucci@indiana.edu
Norbert Chan explores changes in the definition of policy issues. With experience in network analysis, agent-based modeling, and institutional analysis, he is especially concerned with the use of new analytical methods to capture and explain the pattern and dynamic of agenda change. In particular, his research seeks to develop theoretical insights on how general images of policy issues emerge from individual-level interaction within discursive communities. These efforts speak to a broader interest in the relationship between policy issues, perceptions, and social interactions in the public policy process. Apart from his dissertation research on the US Congress, he is also studying voting preferences of the post-handover legislature of Hong Kong and public service motivation in mainland China with colleagues at Indiana University and the University of Hong Kong. kwachan@indiana.edu
Ryan T. Conway is a third-year student in the Political Science PhD program. Exploring the subfields of public policy and political science research methods, his diverse, substantive interests have included international forestry and greenhouse-gas policy, humanitarian aid coordination, and community healthcare systems. The underlying theme to all this is his interest in how negotiated issue-framing can support the emergence of cooperative behavior in otherwise competitive environments. He is currently a member of the Managing the Health Commons research team. Personal research interests include emergency management, zoning policy for sustainable urban design, community economies as commons, and the relationship between public health and the built environment. While pursuing a BA in Philosophy and a BS in Political Science, his earlier research focused on the politics of African mineral economies and the relationship between interstate conflict and democratic transitions. rtconway@indiana.edu
Graham Epstein is a student in the joint PhD program in Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Political Science. His primary research interest is rule compliance in the commons and the interaction of multiple models of human behavior and contextual variables in complex social-ecological systems. He is interested in applying a multiple method approach to develop an improved understanding of behavior and outcomes in the commons. Graham holds a BSc in Ecology from the University of Waterloo and an MSc in International Rural Planning and Development from the University of Guelph. gepstein@indiana.edu
Forrest Fleischman is a PhD candidate in the Joint PhD Program in Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Political Science at Indiana University. His dissertation examines the role of government agencies in implementing forest sector reforms in India. He examines how political controls of the bureaucracy interact with other influences, including internal structure and professional norms, to shape the interpretation and implementation of policies, and how this in turn impacts the sustainability of the reforms themselves, and of the larger ecological and social systems. Prior to joining the PhD program, Forrest worked in agriculture and forestry in both the US and India, and received BS and MS degrees in Earth Systems from Stanford University. fleischf@indiana.edu
Gustavo A. Garcia-Lopez is a PhD candidate in Public Policy and Political Science with concentrations in Environmental Policy and Political Theory & Methods. He received his Masters in Environmental Policy from Cambridge University and his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Geography from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Gustavo’s main research interests are in the areas of community-based natural resource management, participatory governance, grassroots development, environmental justice/environmental movements, sustainability science, and environmental policy and politics. His geographic area of focus is Latin America and Caribbean, with special interest in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Brazil. His dissertation analyzes the impact that secondary (inter-community) forest associations have in community forestry in the state of Durango, Mexico, and how the performance of these associations is affected by internal factors and public policies. The study entailed a one-year comparative case study of four associations using archival research, interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation. This was done with the financial support from the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) “Grassroots Development” Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. This academic year, Gustavo will be spending time both at the Workshop and the University of Puerto Rico’s Institute of Social Sciences to write his dissertation. After completing his degree, Gustavo hopes to pursue a career in teaching, research, and consulting work for community organizations, through which he hopes to foster a better understanding of central problems of sustainable grassroots development in Latin America, and contribute to designing policies that adequately address them. ggarcial@indiana.edu
Ursula Kreitmair is in the joint PhD program in Public Policy of IU's School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Political Science. Appreciating the complexity of human behaviour, she aims to enrich her initial neoclassical approach to environmental problems with institutional analysis. Furthermore she takes a keen interest in environmental equity. Ursula holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University and an MSc in Environmental Policy, Planning and Regulation from the London School of Economics. She has worked for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH Environmental Policy Programme in Beijing. ukreitma@indiana.edu
Carrie Lawrence, a Bloomington native, is a first-year PhD candidate in the School of Health Physical Education and Recreation. Her research interests focuses on the impact of health policy on health disparities and health outcomes. Specifically, the processes of informal networks or community-level groups can work together with their target health issues at a community level in order to decrease health disparities, increase health outcomes and access to care as well as influence policy. Currently, she is working with a research group on a project entitled, Managing the Health Commons. Carrie has a BS and MS in Applied Health Science with concentration in Human Development and Family Studies. She is also a Certified Family Life Educator. calawren@indiana.edu
Sobhi Mohanty is a doctoral student in the Joint PhD program in Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Political Science. A natural scientist so far, she has a B.A. in Biology (Ecology and Evolutionary biology) from Yale University and an M.Sc. in Marine Science from the University of Texas at Austin-Marine Science Institute. Her field experiences range from exploration of wildlife conservation to socio-cultural dimensions of environmental conservation in rural areas. She aims to bring her understanding of ecosystems and ecological processes to the study of evolving interactions between humans and their environment. Her specific interests lie in understanding the environmental as well as social ramifications of economic and industrial policies in developing countries such as India. somamoha@indiana.edu
Shelli Powell is a first-year PhD student in the Political Science program at IU. Shelli’s primary research interest is the role of religious institutions in instrastate conflict and conflict resolution. Specifically, Shelli is interested in questions related to the role of religious institutions in the creation of collective action frames, bargaining positions, and public policy. At the University of Georgia, where she received her Master’s degree, Shelli researched with the Violent Intranational Political Conflict and Terrorism Laboratory: Project Civil Strife program (VIPCAT) and assisted in the collection and coding of data on the strategic behavior of state and non-state actors in Southeast Asia. While at VIPCAT, Shelli developed an interest in separatist/nationalistic movements in Asia. Shelli has also contributed a chapter on psychoanalysis and the study of politics to a published volume entitled, “Grand Theories and Ideologies of the Social Sciences” (Wiarda 2010, 97-112). shjpowel@indiana.edu
Luke Shimek is a first-year student in the Public Policy Joint PhD program at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Department of Political Science. He received his BS in Mathematics, Economics, and International Relations from Wheaton College (IL), and his MA in Economics from Indiana University-Bloomington. He has also worked as a Research Associate at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. His field of interest is institutions and governance with a particular emphasis on understanding corruption in bureaucracies, both through empirical study and the use of network formation games. lshimek@indiana.edu
Sergio Villamayor Tomas is pursuing a Joint PhD Program in Public Policy and Political Science. He holds a BS in Political Science from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and MS in Public Policy from the Sciences-Po Paris. His Master thesis explored the evolution of local communities’ discourse against dam building policy in the Spanish region of Aragon. More recently, he assisted the Aragon’s Water Agency staff in analyzing public consultation records for the elaboration of the 2009 Ebro River’s Basin Management Plan. He is currently working on a case study about the effects of urban growth on a periurban irrigation system in Zaragoza (Spain). His dissertation will look at the adaptive capacity of self-governed irrigation systems in Spain, with particular focus on their integration with government administrative structures and agro-environmental policy. sevillam@indiana.edu
Claudia Brink is a Research Associate working as a Health Policy Analyst. She is currently a coinvestigator on the Managing the Health Commons research project under the direction of Professor Michael McGinnis. As a commons-based social entrepreneur, Claudia is also partnering with a community in Colorado to develop an integrated and comprehensive approach to reversing the increase in overweight children between the ages of 6 and 11.cbrink@indiana.edu
Michael Cox studies social-ecological systems. In his dissertation, he explored the robustness and vulnerabilities of community-based irrigation systems in New Mexico known as acequias. This analysis included an examination of the acequias' responses to historical droughts, and to more novel disturbances of economic development and state-level intervention. He is currently working to develop a more diagnostic approach to environmental policy and management. This approach involves a framework with multiple levels of analysis arranged in order of increasing specificity. This arrangement may facilitate the construction of meaningful theories without overgeneralizing to institutional blueprints that have had negative results when implemented to manage natural resources. miecox@indiana.edu
