Alexander M. Crenshaw Professor of Public PolicyProfessor of Public Administration and Policy
Dr. Whitford serves as the Alexander M. Crenshaw Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. His current research centers on moral hazard and emerging technologies such as surveillance tools and prediction engines.
His latest research articles are on robotics in Public Administration Review, agile governance in Public Administration Review, cryptocurrency in Regulation & Governance, geographic administration in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, presidential health reorganization in Administration & Society, the reorganization of the USCIS in Public Organization Review, and public-private partnerships in the journal Governance.
He is Founding Co-Editor of the Cambridge Elements Series in Public and Nonprofit Administration, a new publication channel for the research community. He is also an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He received the 2017 Herbert A. Simon Award for “significant contribution to the scientific study of bureaucracy.”
His 2021 book is with Derrick Anderson on nanotechnology governance for Cambridge University Press. Integrating Logics in the Governance of Emerging Technologies: The Case of Nanotechnology is the first of several projects on governance, science, advanced technologies, and responsible use.
His 2016 book, Above Politics: Bureaucratic Discretion and Credible Commitment, was published by Cambridge University Press. Written with Gary J. Miller, this book is about how the regulatory state shapes markets, economic performance, and innovation.
This book will receive the American Political Science Association’s 2021 Herbert Simon Award for the best book in public administration. In 2017, this book received APSA’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for US national public policy. In addition, Above Politics received the International Political Science Association’s 2017 Levine Prize for comparative administration and public policy, and the 2016 Book of the Year Award of the Section of Public Administration Research (SPAR) of the American Society of Public Administration.
His 2009 book, Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs, written with Jeff Yates of Binghamton University, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book is about the War on Drugs as a political strategy.
His research papers have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the American Journal of Public Health, Public Administration Review, and the American Journal of Political Science.
He is also an Honorary Professor at University College London, a Member in the UGA Center for Cyber-Physical Systems, and Research Fellow in Arizona State University’s Center for Organization Research and Design. He spent time at the University of Manchester as Hallsworth Visiting Professor in Political Economy, at the National University of Singapore as a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar, at University College London as Visiting Honorary Senior Research Associate, in Germany as a Fulbright German Studies Seminar Scholar, and at the University of Michigan as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research.
