Craig Thomas

Craig Thomas
Associate Professor of Public Affairs
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1997

Contact Information:
Parrington Hall, Room 205
thomasc@washington.edu
206.221.3669

Areas of Specialization:
Environmental Policy, Public Management, Collaborative Governance

Craig Thomas joined the Evans School faculty in 2006. Thomas teaches courses in policy process, environmental policy, performance management, and research design.

His current research analyzes collaboration among public, private, and nonprofit partners as an alternative form of governance to centralized planning and command-and-control regulation, focusing in particular on habitat conservation planning under the Endangered Species Act and watershed organizations.

Thomas previously served on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst from 1997-06.

He is the author of Bureaucratic Landscapes: Interagency Cooperation and the Preservation of Biodiversity (MIT Press, 2003), and co-author of Collaborative Environmental Management: What Roles for Government? (RFF Press, 2004). He has also published numerous articles in interdisciplinary journals and serves on the editorial board of Polity.

He is the 1998 recipient of the American Political Science Association's Leonard D. White Award, which recognizes the best dissertation in the field of public administration.

Outside of academia, Thomas has worked professionally as an administrative analyst for the University of California, a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, and in positions for two environmental nonprofits in Washington, D.C.

Thomas holds a Ph.D. in political science and an MPP from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a BA in international studies from the University of Washington.

Curriculum Vitae (27KB PDF)