Niraj Verma
Professor and Chair
office :116A Hayes Hall
phone : 829.3485 x 109
e-mail : nverma3@buffalo.edu
Education
B.S. Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, India
M.Infrastructure Planning, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Courses
Dr. Verma, chair of the department, will be teaching the Colloquium course. He has also taught theoretical courses in policy and planning, research design, ethics, and international development.
Research
Dr. Verma's current research aims to study some recent policy initiatives, such as "Three Stikes Law," "Term Limits," and "Zero Tolerance Against Drugs" as examples of risk avoidance strategies in an effort to understand the motivations behind these policies. As well, he is completing a theoretical article that investigates negotiation and consensus building from a lens that draws on Frankfurt School and the critical theorists.
Selected Publications
- Institutions and Planning (edited), Oxford: Elsevier, (in press) 2006.
- Similarities, Connections, and Systems: The Search for a New Rationality for Planning and Management, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 1998.
- “Communicative Rationality, Marx, and the Pragmatists: A Revisionist Reading" (with HaeRan Shin), Planning Theory (forthcoming).
- “Relativism and Pluralism in Open Moral Communities," Planning Theory, 2005.
- “Communicative Action and the Network Society: A Pragmatic Marriage," Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 24: 131-140, 2004.
- "Interdisciplinary Scholarship is About Depth More Than Breadth," Planning and Policy, Vol. 3: 73-85, 2004.
