Gemma Smith

Gemma Smith holds a joint appointment as Assistant Research Professor at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and Assistant Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona.

Gemma is an interdisciplinary scholar at the intersection of environmental policy, governance, and justice, and water resources engineering. She graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in Environment and Resources and a Minor in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2023.

Her research examines complex, multi-jurisdictional water governance challenges, primarily international cooperation over freshwater resources—such as the Tijuana and Colorado Rivers—and governance of emergent pollutants such as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). She applies collaborative governance, multi-level governance, and environmental federalism lenses to understand problem dimensions and identify potential pathways forward for these complex issues, centering human experience and institutional design. Her methods draw on social, political, economic and environmental qualitative and quantitative data with the goal of making more robust causal connections between institutional design, policy decisions, and environmental outcomes. Her research has been published in Policy Studies Journal, Environmental Science & Policy, Environmental Policy & Governance, and International Journal of the Commons, among others. She co-leads the RIPPLES Lab (Research in Pollutant PoLicy for Environment and Society).

Prior to her PhD, Gemma completed her Master’s in International Policy (Environment and Energy specialization) at Stanford University and a Graduate Diploma in Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She previously worked in international investment management in Europe and Asia, having completed her Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Spanish at the University of Exeter, UK, in 2013.