Curriculum Vitae

As a Carsey faculty fellow, Tom Safford is investigating community resilience to social and environmental concerns in coastal Maine, Alaska, and Washington State as a part of Carsey’s Communities and the Environment in Rural America (CERA) initiative. Tom developed collaborative research with the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and the USDA Rural Development Program that examined how natural resource dependent communities adapt to linked social and environmental change. He is also leading a new project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that will develop social indicators for coastal restoration acceptability in the Puget Sound region of Washington. 

Tom is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire. His research focuses on understanding the social bases of environmental attitudes and beliefs and analyzing inter-organizational relationships among public and private sector actors engaged in collaborative environmental management. He has conducted applied sociological research and developed methods for integrating social and natural science information to support policy making and natural resource management for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). His prior research appears in such journals as Society and Natural Resources, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Environmental Management, and Coastal Management. Tom received his bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina, his master's degree from Stanford University, and his doctorate degree from Cornell University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the NOAA Coastal Services Center and the NMFS Northwest Fisheries Science Center from 2004 to 2006.