Jeffrey Broadbent

Jeffrey Praed Broadbent (born in 1944) is an Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota whose academic focus includes comparative sociology; culture and structure; environmental sociology; Japanese society; networks and identity; political sociology; qualitative methods; social movements; and East Asian society. He is also a member of the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Broadbent received his B.A. in religious studies-Buddhism at the University of California, Berkeley, his M.A. in regional studies—Japan at Harvard University, and his Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard University.

Broadbent is the principal investigator for the COMPON Project (Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks), an ongoing international research project, focusing on societal reactions to climate change and the ways that these reactions influence international negotiations and governmental policy.

From 1988-1989, Broadbent was a grantee of the Japan-United States Educational Commission (a Fulbright Program), and he was a Fulbright-Hays scholar from 1989-1990. In 2001, Broadbent was awarded the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize for his book, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest (Cambridge University Press, 1998).