Tara Grillos

Tara Grillos

Ph.D. Public Policy 2015
Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University
Tara Grillos Photo

Tara Grillos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. Prior to that, she was a  Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Institute of Behavioral Science. Grounded in political science and economics, her research focuses on human decision-making and behavior in the context of sustainable development. She is interested in questions of participation, collective action, empowerment and public goods provision, particularly with respect to natural resource dilemmas in developing countries. She advocates a multi-method approach to research that blends rigorous experimental and quantitative analysis with the richness of qualitative data.

She received her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University, where she was a fellow in the Sustainability Science Program and the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Before entering the doctoral program, she earned a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School and a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, as a student in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. During college, she spent a semester as an exchange student at the University of Havana in Cuba, and after graduation, she served for two years as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras. Her doctoral dissertation involved fieldwork in Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.

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