Trevor Brown conducts research and teaches on public management and leadership, governance, government contracting, public private partnerships, and democracy and democratic transitions.
Professor Brown received his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Political Science from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Political Science, Indiana University and a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University.
He currently serves as the Dean of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University where he has been a faculty member since 2001. He also serves as the Executive Director of the State of Ohio Leadership Institute, a training resource for state and local elected officials in Ohio. He previously held the position of Pasqual Maragall Chair Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona’s Department of Economic Policy and a Visiting Assistant Professor position in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University. He also served as the U.S. Project Manager and Associate Project Executive for the Parliamentary Development Project, a U.S. Agency for International Development funded organization that provided technical assistance to the Ukrainian parliament from 1994-2013. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
His research focuses on public-private partnerships and how governments organize to deliver goods and services to citizens, and when governments elect to contract service delivery, how they manage the relationship with the vendor. The National Institute of Governmental Purchasing recognized him as the Scholar of the Year in 2013. The American Society of Public Administration’s Section on Public Administration Research awarded his co-authored book, Complex Contracting: Government Contracting in the Wake of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater Program (Cambridge University Press), as the Book of the Year in 2014. He has published in a variety of journals including Public Administration Review, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.
He teaches undergraduate, graduate professional, doctoral and executive education courses on managing and leading public sector organizations, public sector organizational strategy, organizational theory, and democratic transition.
He has also worked with local, state, federal, and foreign governments and public organizations to improve organizational and managerial performance. He has conducted applied research projects for the U.S. Department of the Navy, the IBM Center for the Business of Government, the Pew Center on the States, the City of Columbus, Ohio, the Eurasia Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. His research on government contracting has been utilized by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.