Prior to coming to Dartmouth, he studied under Elinor Ostrom at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University (like many of the SESMAD core members). He has been involved in the Resilience Alliance for several years, which is also a common theme among the SESMAD team members. His current research involves the institutional analysis of irrigation systems in New Mexico, Colorado, and Kenya, as well as farming systems in Peru and a small-scale fishery in the Dominican Republic. In addition to this fieldwork-based research, Michael has conducted several meta-analyses of previous work in order to synthesize findings across a range of systems. The largest of these is easily now the SESMAD project as described throughout this website.