Miriam Jorgensen

Miriam is Research Director for the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona and for its sister program, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Her areas of specialty are Indigenous governance and economic development, with a particular focus on the ways communities’ governance arrangements and socio-cultural characteristics affect development. Her work—in the United States, Canada, and Australia—has addressed issues as wide-ranging as welfare policy, policing and justice systems, natural resources, cultural stewardship, land ownership, enterprise management, financial education, and philanthropy.

She is a co-author of Structuring Sovereignty: Constitutions of Native Nations (UCLA AIS Press, 2014) and The State of the Native Nations: Conditions under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination (Oxford University Press, 2008); editor and co-author of Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development (University of Arizona Press, 2007); and a member of the editorial board of the International Indigenous Policy Journal.

Jorgensen co-directs the Indigenous Governance masters degree and continuing education certificate programs at the University of Arizona. She is also Affiliate Faculty at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, and Professorial Fellow in Indigenous Governance with the Melbourne School of Government. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Washington University Schools of Law and Social Work; a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at University of Technology, Sydney; a Dyason Fellow at Melbourne Law School; and Visiting Research Professor at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales. Jorgensen is also a former member of the Swarthmore College Board of Managers. Dr. Jorgensen received her BA in economics from Swarthmore College, MA in human sciences from the University of Oxford, and MPP and PhD from Harvard University.