Arden Rowell is the associate dean for research and the Mildred van Voorhis Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, where she teaches and writes on risk regulation, human behavior, and environmental law. Drawing on ideas from law, science, engineering, the arts, and the social sciences, Rowell works collaboratively across disciplines to understand how people and institutions navigate risk and uncertainty. Her work bridges behavioral analysis, empirical research, and normative theory, and has informed ongoing discussions of regulatory policy in the United States and abroad.
Rowell has been a visiting professor at Duke Law School and Harvard Law School and a visiting researcher at Oxford University, and completed a federal detail at the National Center for Environmental Economics at the Environmental Protection Agency. At Illinois, Rowell is an affiliate of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Institute for Government and Public Affairs, the European Union Center, and the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program. In 2015 she was named a University Scholar through a program meant to recognize the university’s “very best teachers and scholars.”
Rowell is the co-author of The Psychology of Environmental Law, A Guide to U.S. Environmental Law and A Guide to EU Environmental Law and has published in venues ranging from the Harvard Environmental Law Review and The University of Chicago Law Review to Science and Progress in Nuclear Energy. She authored an analysis for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on the regulation of inhalation hazards; has been named to the Fulbright Specialist roster for her work on risk regulation, law and behavior, and environmental law and policy; and has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for her interdisciplinary work on regulating risk and technology.
Before joining the Illinois faculty in 2010, Rowell was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School, from which she also received her J.D. After law school, Professor Rowell practiced at Perkins Coie LLP in Seattle. She has a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology/archaeology, which she earned from the University of Washington at the age of 18. Before law school, she worked as an encyclopedia entry writer and as a video game tester.
Education
JD University of Chicago Law School
BA University of Washington
Areas of Expertise
Administrative Law
Environmental Law and Conservation
Psychology and Law
Tort Law
