Nancy Manring is Associate Professor of Political Science, Director of the Environmental Studies Certificate Program, and a member of the Master of Science in Environmental Studies (MSES) Program faculty and Advisory Board. She has a B.S. and M.S. in Landscape Horticulture from Ohio State University. She received her Ph.D. in Natural Resource Policy and Administration with an emphasis on environmental dispute resolution from the University of Michigan in 1991. Dr. Manring’s teaching interests include environmental and natural resource policy and politics, politics of the environmental movement, environmental and public dispute resolution, the politics of sustainability, and environmental literacy.

Dr. Manring enjoys teaching both undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of majors and colleges. As an MSES thesis advisor, she has worked with students on a broad range of policy-related research projects including studies of watershed partnerships for the control of non-point source pollution in Minnesota, management of the bushmeat trade in Ghana, community-based sustainable forest management in Southeastern Ohio, river basin management in Mexico, and non-profit environmental organizations and place-based environmentalism.

Dr. Manring’s research focuses on collaborative dispute resolution processes in natural resource management. Her recent work on democratic accountability in the U.S. Forest Service planning process was published in Society and Natural Resources, the Journal of Forestry, and Administration and Society. Her earlier work exploring the organizational implications of the adoption of environmental dispute resolution processes by the U.S. Forest Service was published in The Negotiation Journal, Public Administration Review, Society and Natural Resources, and American Review of Public Administration.

Prior to full-time teaching in the Political Science Department, Dr. Manring was the Manager of the Public Dispute Resolution Program at the Institute for Local Government Administration and Rural Development at Ohio University. Partnering with the Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management, in 1992-1993, she served as a co-facilitator and evaluator of the Ohio Wetlands Task Force, a year-long, collaborative policy dialogue to address wetlands protection and management in Ohio.

Dr. Manring is a member of the Association for Conflict Resolution and the Society of American Foresters. When she is not teaching or doing research, Dr. Manring enjoys life on a farm in Athens County with her husband and two children, one dog, five cats, four sheep, one horse and a donkey.

Environmental Studies Program