I work on problems of water rights and water policy at the intersection of law, geography, and political economy. My approach is comparative and interdisciplinary in research, teaching, and outreach. I have studied water markets and privatization; water conflicts and governance, hydroelectric power, and the law and political economy of property rights and environmental regulation. My regional expertise is in the Western United States and Latin America, especially Chile where I have lived and worked for many years. I am concerned with empirical issues of law and public policy and I aim to bridge the gap between academic and policy audiences. I am regularly interviewed about water policy by journalists, professionals, and students in Latin America, the U.S.A., and Europe.
My overall academic goal is to combine the fields of law-and-society (socio-legal studies) and geography (socio-environmental studies): that is, to bring together different fields of law, history, geography, and political economy as they relate to water, land, and nature. This interdisciplinary approach to human-environment relations, grounded in history and the physical world, is what geography means to me. I have specialized in water both of its strange and wonderful physical properties and because it circulates through and connects other natural environmental systems and economic uses of nature. Looking at the world through the lens of water offers a unique perspective on the Big Picture. More generally, beyond water, I am interested in the relationship between market economics, legal and institutional arrangements, and environment. My analytical approach emphasizes property rights because that is the area where all these fields overlap most closely.