He holds a Ph.D. from The George Washington University and was formerly a Visiting Research Professor in FLACSO-Ecuador. Kauffman’s research investigates how the interaction between actors at the global and local levels determines policy responses to environmental challenges such as climate change and ecosystem degradation. He is the author of Grassroots Global Governance: Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and has published in Global Environmental Politics, World Development, Environmental Research Letters, Agricultural Water Management, Peace Review, and Encyclopedia of Political Theory (SAGE, 2011).