Congrats to Michael Cox!!

For successfully defending his dissertation, titled "Exploring the Dynamics of Social-Ecological Systems: The Case of the Taos Valley Acequias." My favorite paragraph was the one that, in my view, was very representative of the Bloomington School's influence:

An additional source of disturbance has been the implementation of state-level policies mandating that the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (OSE) quantify all water rights and regulate them in accordance with the principle of prior appropriation; a principle which, while underlying the acequias’ claims to their historically used water, may also undermine their common property institutional arrangements. This mandate has been implemented in Taos through a formal water rights adjudication suite referred to commonly as the Abeyta case (State of New Mexico ex rel. State Engineer v. Abeyta and State of New Mexico ex rel. State Engineer v. Arellano), the purpose of which is to quantify and prioritize all of the individual-level water rights in the valley.

Michael is one of our Public Affairs PhD students out of the Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis.

Here is a sample of his work that has a R&R at JEEM. Another chapter of his dissertation has an R&R elsewhere.

Here you can read Elinor Ostrom discuss Michael's scholarly contributions in the context of the Bloomington School in a piece for the Lincoln Land Institute.

He is on the job market this year, so if you are hunting for a candidate please take a look at him. His dissertation committee consisted of Elinor Ostrom (chair), JC Randolph, William Bloomquist, Tom Evans, and myself.