Bio

Thomas Webler is a Senior Researcher with the Social and Environmental Research Institute in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He specializes in the science of bringing local and expert knowledge together in collaborative, democratic ways to produce innovative solutions to problems of collective action in the areas of environmental and risk decision-making. He was a consultant to the U.S. National Research Council committee that developed the analytic-deliberative model of public participation. He co-authored Risk, Uncertainty, and Rational Action (London: Earthscan 2001), a book on advances in social science theory in the field of risk studies. As a Fellow of the Breuninger Foundation at the University of Stuttgart in 2006 he studied cooperation. In 2007-2008 he was in India on a Fulbright teaching fellowship to teach the social dimensions of biodiversity conservation. His present research focuses on empowering community involvement in superfund clean-ups and assessing the vulnerability of fisheries communities to regulatory change.