Renowned Indian American environmental policy scholar Aseem Prakash has joined the McCourt School of Public Policy as its new chair with a joint appointment at Georgetown University’s Earth Commons Institute.
Prakash’s globally and nationally recognized scholarship explores environmental policy, climate governance, non-governmental organizations and nonprofits, as well as voluntary and private regulation, the school noted announcing his appointment.
He earned his BA in economics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India before beginning his career in the marketing department at Procter & Gamble in India.
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Prakash then turned to academia, earning a joint PhD from the Department of Political Science and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington.
He went on to join the faculty of the School of Business at The George Washington University and was a member of the Department of Political Science faculty at the University of Washington, Seattle.
A leading voice in environmental governance, Prakash founded the Environmental Politics and Governance (EPG) network. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and the Washington State Academy of Sciences and has served as an international research fellow at the Center for Corporate Reputation, University of Oxford, as well as on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Board on Environmental Change and society.
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Among Prakash’s recent recognitions are the American Political Science Association’s 2025 John Gaus Award for a lifetime of scholarship bridging political science and public administration, and the Public Policy Section’s 2024 Excellence in Mentoring Award.
In 2023, the International Studies Association’s Environmental Studies Section honored him with its Distinguished Scholar Award, recognizing scholars whose research has shaped the fields of international relations and environmental studies.
In 2020, he received the American Political Science Association’s Elinor Ostrom Career Achievement Award for his contributions to the study of science, technology and environmental politics.