Associate Professor Michael Elliott, Ph.D.
Ph.D., urban and regional studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984.
M.C.P., city and regional planning, University of California, Berkeley, 1978.
B.S., architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1974.
B.S., urban studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1974.
Dr. Michael Elliott is an Associate Professor, jointly appointed to the City and Regional Planning Program and the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a co-founder and associate of the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution. His specialties include public policy dispute resolution and environmental management.
In these capacities, Dr. Elliott (1) mediates and facilitates public policy consensus building processes, (2) designs dispute management systems, and (3) conducts evaluations of collaborative decision processes, policy implementation and conflict management. These activities have focused on resolving disputes over solid and hazardous waste, siting and managing locally unwanted facilities, agricultural issues, risk management policy, endangered species, resource management, and growth management. Nationally, he has worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, the Army Environmental Policy Institute, the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, and the New York Academy of Science. Internationally, he provides dispute system and process design consultations and training for resolving environmental and land disputes in Estonia, Israel, Nicaragua, Kazakhstan, and Germany.
Dr. Elliott’s research focuses on environmental dispute dynamics, evaluating the effectiveness of dispute management processes and systems, and examining the social impact of collaborative processes. He is co-editor of Making Sense of Environmental Conflicts and co-author of Paternalism, Conflict and Co-Production. These books focus on conflict dynamics in intractable conflicts, including risk perception, and on the potential transfer to the United States of conflict management techniques employed in Europe. Other publications in the field of dispute resolution include Models for Mediation, Social Conflict Assessment in the Design of Risk Management Systems, The Effects of Differing Assessments of Risk in Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Negotiations, and Resolving Development Disputes through Conflict Resolution. These articles and chapters focus on various aspects of conflict management, with emphasis on risk perception, conflict assessment, political analysis, and strategies for managing conflict in complex, multi-party disputes associated with public policymaking. As a teacher of continuing education courses, he has conducted over 50 professional training workshops in the field of public policy conflict management and negotiation.
Dr. Elliott received his Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Studies (1984) and his B.S. degrees in Architecture and in Urban Studies (1974) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his M.C.P. (1978) from the University of California, Berkeley. Among other awards, he is recipient of the Georgia Tech Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activity Award and the Georgia Planning Association Merit Award. He is a member of the Association for Conflict Resolution, the National Association of Environmental Professionals, the International Association of Conflict Management, and the American Planning Association.