I study governance problems and how actors collaborate in order to solve them. My research interests revolve around two main foci:

1. how governmental actors and stakeholders collaborate to further their interests across levels of governance, and how their collaboration can be leveraged to achieve desirable societal goals;

2. how the costs of regulation are distributed across societal actors, and how public administrators and stakeholders manage the inherent trade-offs.

I have also done work on the interplay between formal and informal governance, and the different - and interrelated - purposes they may serve. I am particularly interested in the governance and regulation of infrastructure (building, zoning, financing, maintaining, operating).

Thus, my areas of expertise and focus comprise public policy, public administration, regulation and governance.  Most of my research relies on mixed methods designs, comprising surveys and interviews followed by quantitative or qualitative analysis. My reseach approach is post-positivist. I am familiar with a range of quantitative research methods, and have developed a specific expertise in quantitative network analysis and automated text analysis. I work in R.

Currently, I am working with Prof Mark Lubell on the RISER project; we study the governance challenges to adaptation to sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am also working on a parallel project focused on the governance of critical transportation infrastructure corridors impacted by sea level rise in different areas of California (the Bay Area, LA County and San Diego). My research agenda also comprises the study of the European Union as a multi-level governance system, particularly administrative networks, EU institutions, energy and environmental policy, and the relationships between the EU and its Southern neighbourhood.