About
Warigia M. Bowman currently teaches water law, energy regulation, natural resources and evidence at The University of Tulsa College of Law. Her work has been cited in the New York TImes, and she is a sought after water expert who has been interviewed by PBS, CNN, and Democracy Now. She is the Director of the Sustainable Energy and Natural Resources Law Program (SERL) at The University of Tulsa College of Law.
An honors graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Bowman clerked for Justice Jack Hightower of the Texas Supreme Court, and served as an honors trial attorney in the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Janet Reno. She was a Harry S. Truman Scholar at Columbia College, the Barbara Jordan Scholar at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and the Oppenheimer Scholar at the Hauser Scholar for Nonprofit Organizations at the Kennedy School, where she earned her doctorate.
Bowman has extensive law and policy experience in local, state and federal government, as well as in the non-profit sector. Before coming to The University of Tulsa College of Law, Bowman has published widely on telecommunications and regulatory issues and has consulted for the Kenyan Government, USAID, the United Nations, and the U.S. State Department. Before joining The University of Tulsa, she taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, during the revolution of 2011, as well as at the University of Mississippi and the University of Arkansas.
The University of Tulsa College of Law’s Warigia Bowman is a widely published expert on public policy, infrastructure, water and energy. Bowman, along with 34 interdisciplinary researchers , was recently awarded part of a multi-million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, administered by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).
Bowman’s work is multidisciplinary, and is informed by the fields of history, law, science and technology studies, as well as political science. She is interested in energy, water, infrastructure, regulation, elections, and telecommunications, both in the Southwestern United States, and in Africa.
Awards and Honors
Author of “Digital Development in East Africa: The Distribution. Diffusion, and Governance of Information Technology,” published by Palgrave McMillan in September 2023.
“Consumer Willingness to Pay for A Resilient Electrical Grid,” at ENERGY ECONOMICS, revise and resubmit corrections made on August 21, 2023 (with Dayton Lambert, Joe Ripberger, Hank Jenkins and Carol Silva).
Dikos Nitsaa’igii-19: “The Big Cough: Coal, Covid-19, and the Navajo,” 73 U.C. HASTINGS L. J. (2022).
“Black Wall Street and All-Black Towns in Oklahoma,” 57 TULSA L. REV. 1 (2022).
“Oklahoma Renewable Energy Policy Encounters a COVID Roadblock: 2019-2020,” 7 TEX. A&M J. PROP. L. 512 (2021)
“Sustainable Futures: An Agenda for Action, by Raphael Kaplinsky,” 2012, 42 THE ENERGY LAW JOURNAL, 2: 395-398 (2021)
“Dustbowl Waters: Doctrinal and Legislative Solutions to Save the Ogallala Aquifer before Both Time and Water Run Out,” 91 U. COL. L. REV. 1081 (2020).
“Dust in the Wind: Regulatory Solutions to Mitigate the Downsides of Wind Energy,” 69 U. KAN. L. REV. 45 (2020).
Education
- Ph.D., Harvard University
- J.D., School of Law, University of Texas at Austin
- M.A., University of Texas at Austin
- B.A., Columbia University
Research interests and areas of expertise
- Electrification
- Water law
- Natural resources
- Aquifer depletion