Tim Bartley is a sociologist who studies sustainability standards, environmental/environmental justice movements, and the regulation of global industries. More broadly, he is interested in political, organizational, and economic processes that shape environments, workplaces, and the expression of rights around the world.
His 2018 book, Rules without Rights: Land, Labor, and Private Authority in the Global Economy (winner or the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for environmental studies from the International Studies Association) examined sustainable forestry and fair labor standards in Indonesia and China. In current work, he is examining collective perceptions of “distant” problems, regulatory change in the European Union, and how green industrial transitions proceed or falter. He does both qualitative and quantitative research, ranging from semi-structured interviews with companies and advocacy groups to survey experiments with citizen-consumers and workers.
Prior to coming to Georgetown, he was a Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, and he has also held previous appointments at Stockholm University, Ohio State University, and Indiana University. He received his PhD from the University of Arizona and has been lucky to spend time as a visiting scholar at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Germany, the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, Sun Yat-sen University in China, the University of Paris-Dauphine, Princeton, and MIT. He is the past chair (2022-23) of the American Sociological Association’s section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work and continues to be a coordinator of the Regulation & Governance network for the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.