About Me |
I am an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in Chapman University's Environmental Science and Policy program. I received my Ph.D at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in 2022, and I am a former USIP Peace Scholar Fellow.
I combine fieldwork with quasi-experimental and qualitative methods to study two key questions related to environmental politics. First, I ask whether how environmental problems affect political behavior. Some of my research estimates the effect of air pollution on mobilization for political advocacy in the United States. In other projects, I disentangle the relationship between experiencing shortages in environmental services (e.g., waste management) and various forms of political participation in Monrovia, Liberia, where I work closely with the Center for Action Research and Training. Second, I ask whether and how international organizations can resolve environmental problems at the local level. For example, I have ongoing research evaluating the trade-offs of transferring the governance and management of protected areas from state actors to private organizations in Africa. My new book project tackles both research questions simultaneously, exploring how United Nations peacekeeping operations can promote the cooperative management of natural resources in a climate-changed world. I have been fortunate enough to publish in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory and International Peacekeeping, and my research has been supported by organizations like the Folke Bernadotte Academy. You can find me either climbing or running in the Eastern Sierras in my free time. Please feel free to email me at phunnicutt@chapman.edu if you would like to chat! |