Hal Wolman is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at GW. He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Building Resilient Regions network.

Dr. Wolman's fields of interest include urban and metropolitan policy and politics, local and regional economic development, state and local fiscal policy, and comparative urban policy and politics. Much of his work is interdisciplinary, drawing upon the fields of political science, policy analysis, and economics. He teaches Urban Problems and Policy Analysis, Urban Politics, and Politics and the Policy Process.

Professor Wolman holds a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Michigan and a Master's in Urban Planning from M.I.T. Prior to coming to GW, Dr. Wolman was Director of the Policy Sciences graduate program at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County from 1997-2000. Before that, he was a professor of Political Science and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University. He also served as a Research Associate for the Urban Institute's Public Finance Program from 1978-1984.

Dr. Wolman also has experience in the world of public affairs and policy making, both as staff director of the House Subcommittee on the Cities and as a legislative assistant to Senator Adlai E. Stevenson. He was also Director of Research for the White House conference on Balanced Growth and Economic Development. He recently served as the staff consultant to the National Research Council's Committee on the Future of American Cities.

Professor Wolman's authored and edited books include Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects (Brookings Institution, 2008) Governance and Opportunity in Metropolitan Areas (National Academy Press, 1999), Theories of Urban Politics (Sage Publications, 1995), Urban Politics and Policy: A Comparative Approach (Basil Blackwell, 1992), and Comparing Housing Systems: Housing Performance and Housing Policy in the U.S. and Britain (Oxford University Press, 1992). Other research and publications explore regional economic resilience, the determinants of urban and regional economic growth, national urban policy, comparative urban policy and politics, local governments and fiscal autonomy, policy transfer among governments, the effect of population change on urban representation in Congress, city-suburban disparities in income and their causes, the relationship of cities to suburbs, the effect of mayoral change on public policy, and changing intergovernmental relations; as well as specific problems and policies in the areas of urban economic development, urban fiscal problems, housing and community development, urban labor markets, welfare, and transportation.

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