Philip Womble

Philip Womble is trained as an attorney and a hydrologist and specializes in water policy, water rights, and water markets. He joined the University of Washington in 2024. Before UW, Philip was a postdoctoral fellow with the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and a fellow at Stanford Law School. He holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources and a J.D. from Stanford University.

Philip’s research bridges the biophysical and social sciences, integrating diverse methodologies spanning water resources engineering, ecohydrology, economics, and law. He is drawn to freshwater systems research that evaluates how specific legal, policy, and management strategies can improve sustainability, efficiency, and access. His recent research evaluates environmental water markets in the Upper Colorado River basin, barriers to adaptive water rights transfers in the state of Colorado, and Native American groundwater rights across the western United States. Prior research analyzed one of the largest markets for freshwater ecosystem services in the United States – wetland and stream compensatory mitigation under the Clean Water Act. Philip has published in top academic journals, including articles in Science, Water Resources Research, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review.

Philip has also worked across the nonprofit, private, and public sectors. He has held positions with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, DC, The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River Program, and a water law firm in Denver, Colorado. He served as a research assistant for Special Master Barton Thompson, Jr. in the U.S. Supreme Court interstate water dispute Montana v. Wyoming. Philip grew up in North Carolina, where he received his B.S. in Environmental Science from UNC-Chapel Hill.