Thomas Princen

Associate Professor, School of Natural Resources and Environment

University of Michigan

Dr. Thomas Princen's research focuses on ecological and social sustainability. He is author of The Logic of Sufficiency (MIT Press, 2005) and co-editor of Confronting Consumption (MIT Press, 2002), which won the International Studies Association's 2003 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for "best book in the study of international environmental problems." Dr. Princen is co-author with Matthias Finger, of Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and the Global (Routledge, 1994) and author of Intermediaries in International Conflict (Princeton, 1992/1995). He was a Pew Faculty Fellow for International Affairs where he received intensive training in methods of active learning. A grant from the MacArthur Foundation for research on consumption and the environment has led to THE two books, Confronting Consumption and The Logic of Sufficiency. He currently is Associate Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan (USA), where he also co-directs the Workshop on Consumption and Environment.

Dr. Princen is a co-founder of the Alternative Consumption Research Community, a multidisciplinary network of researchers who share an interest in issues of overconsumption and consumerism and in alternative consumption practices such as sufficiency, sustainability, and voluntary simplicity.

Dr. Princen received his Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University in 1988, and a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Pomona College in 1975. He was a MacArthur Foundation Post-Doctoral Visiting Research Fellow in International Peace & Security at Princeton University from 1988 to 1989.