Cory Struthers

Cory Struthers is an Assistant Professor in the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington, Seattle. She joined the Evans School in 2023. Struthers studies how public opinion, scientific information, and special interests filter through institutions to shape policymakers’ decisions, especially on climate change and the environment. Trained as a political institutionalist, she considers how legislative and administrative structures, rules, and policy processes shape the inputs decision-makers receive as well as how they analyze and respond to these inputs through policy design and implementation. Struthers is particularly interested in how institutions influence the representation of interests in climate and environment policy. Her empirical work has spanned forest management, extreme drought, harmful algal blooms, and energy policy.

Struthers’ work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Policy Studies Journal, Nature Sustainability, and Current Opinion on Environmental Sustainability. One of her current projects investigates how California legislators have responded to climate impacts over the last twenty years, with particular attention to agriculture and water policy.

Prior to her position at the Evans School, Cory was an Assistant Professor in Public Administration and Policy and the University of Georgia (UGA) and on the Executive Committee for UGA’s Center for Integrative Conservation Research. Before UGA, she was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota. Cory received her PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Davis. She also holds an MA in International Policy Development from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS).