Ken Cousins

EDUCATION

2017       Certificate in GIS, University of Washington, Professional and Continuing Education

Capstone: "Salmon-Safe Culverts in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska,” identifying benefits and costs due to localized flooding and transportation disruptions following culvert failure

2006       Ph.D., University of Maryland, Politics of Environment and Natural Resources

Dissertation: "Principals, Agents, and Distant Markets: the Role of Information in Non-State Market-Driven Public Policy," comparing delegation and information transfer in sustainable forest management and certification systems in Chile

2001       M.A., University of Maryland, Political Economy (Natural Resources and Environment, Ecological Economics)

1998       B.A., University of Washington, Political Science (Political Economy, Latin American Politics)

1992       B.A., Evergreen State College, Ecological Agriculture (minor in Discrete Mathematics)

WORK

2015-present Ecological Economist, Research Principal, Earth Economics, Tacoma, WA

Estimating non-market economic value of ecosystem goods and services; supervising research team, research design and development of applied Ecological Economics methods.

2009-2015   Research Scientist, Center for Policy Research, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, SUNY

Research design, data collection and analysis; extracted relational data from large text corpora; curated database of 2,700 violent non-state groups; integrated multiple large-scale entity and event datasets

2007-2008       Visiting Assistant Professor, Western Washington University, Department of Political Science

Environmental Politics, Introduction to Political Science, Politics of Inequality, and the Political Economy of Social Labeling

2004-2008       Research Scientist, NSF Law & Social Sciences Grants: Intercourt Relations in the American Legal System I and II

Developed and co-directed a $340,000 project on development of tools and techniques to study the development of legal precedent within the American federal courts, on the issue of regulatory takings

2004-2005       EPA Risk Assessment Consultant, International Center for Toxicology and Medicine

Human health risk models in IRAP-h View, merged land use data with 3-dimensional vector models, test burn data, and meteorological data to project impacts on human morbidity and mortality

2002, 1998       Research Assistant, Minorities at Risk Project, Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland

Analyzed event-level data (1992-2002) for thirty-three minority groups throughout Latin America; annual risk assessment summaries for each group

2001-2002       Research Fellow, Forest Stewardship Council, Washington, DC

Research support for comparison of FSC and SFI technical standards; field research on means to support small-scale private forest owners

2000-2001       Program Assistant, Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda, University of Maryland

Planned twice-monthly lecture series and academic workshops on the political economy of sustainability and equitable stewardship

1996       Research Assistant, Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA

Research support for an undergraduate course on the history of economic thought, and an intellectual biography of John Kenneth Galbraith

1993-1995       Vocational Agriculture Instructor, National Agriculture-Technical Institute / US Peace Corps, Caraparí, Bolivia

Established curriculum for agriculture and nutrition, with daily lectures and practical exercises for over 100 students. All classes taught in Spanish.

conferences

“Outdoor Recreation on State Lands in Washington: What mobile device data reveal about visitation” American Planning Association Inland Empire Section Annual Conference, Priest Lake, ID, June 1, 2023

“Nature’s Value in the Salish Sea: Identifying the Economics Behind a Healthy Puget Sound” Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, April 28, 2022

“Improving Salmon Access to Inland Habitat while Reducing Risk to Human Safety and Property” Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, April 27, 2022

"Green, Blue, and Grey: ecosystem services and overlapping water and transport networks" US Society for Ecological Economics / Ecological Society of America 2019, Louisville, KY, August 2019

"If a Tree Falls on the Other Side of the World ... Distance and Information in Global Markets" Exploratory Workshop on Research in Corporate Social Responsibility, Yale University, New Haven, CT, January 2007

"The Evolution of Law in the Federal Court System: a Citation Analysis of Federal Regulatory Takings Decisions, 1978-2005," with Wayne McIntosh, Michael Evans, Steve Simon, and John McTague Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, September 2006

"Principals, Agents, and Public Goods: Information and Structural Complexity in Policy Implementation Systems." Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, San Diego, CA, March 2006. Awarded Best Graduate Student Paper, Environmental Studies Section

"More than Typewriters, More than Adding Machines: Integrating Information Technology Into Political Research,” Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, March 2004

“Certification: an Insider’s Perspective," 7th Annual Environmental Law & Institutions Colloquium, Certification Institutions and Private Governance: New Dynamics in the Protection of Workers and the Environment, Duke Center for Environmental Solutions, December 2001

"Defining Responsibility: Control of Knowledge in Chilean Environmental Law," Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Chicago, February 2001