Craig W. Thomas

Craig Thomas joined the Evans School in 2006, after serving on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for nine years. He teaches courses in policy processes and public management, environmental and natural resource policy, and qualitative methods. His research analyzes collaboration among public, private, and nonprofit partners, with a particular focus on how science is used in collaborative decision making. He also studies a variety of environmental topics, including habitat conservation planning and watershed management, along with air pollution, forestry, and marine policy. 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).

Professor Thomas has served in a variety of capacities, including as Editor of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (2009-2013) and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Evans School (2016-2018). He was also a commissioner on NASPAA’s accrediting body, the Commission on Peer Review and Accreditation (2016-2019), and a member of the Board of Directors for the Public Management Research Association (2019-2023).

Professor Thomas holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and an MPP from the University of California at Berkeley, along with a BA in International Studies from the University of Washington. He received the American Political Science Association’s Leonard D. White Award, which recognizes the best dissertation in the field of public administration. Prior to receiving his Ph.D., he was 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 worked in staff positions for environmental nonprofits in Washington, D.C.