Stephen Cornell is director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. He also is a professor of sociology and public administration and policy at The University of Arizona. Prior to joining the Center on July 1, 1998, he was chair of the department of sociology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is co-founder of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development, formerly the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, a research program—headquartered at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

A specialist in political economy and cultural sociology, Cornell holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University for nine years before moving to UCSD in 1989. He has written widely on Indian affairs, economic development, collective identity, and ethnic and race relations. Among his publications are The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence, What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development (co-edited with Joseph P. Kalt), and Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (co-authored with Douglas Hartmann).

Dr. Cornell has spent much of the last dozen years working closely with Indian nations in the United States and Canada on economic development, tribal governance, and tribal policy issues. Among his recent policy-related projects are a study of the on-and-off-reservation economic and social impacts of Indian gaming operations and an analysis of Native self-governance in Alaska. He serves on the faculty of the National Executive Education Program for Native American Leadership and is a member of the editorial board of Ethnic and Racial Studies.