Personal

A note for blog readers who want to know who’s writing. The academic homepage is the professional version. This page is the human one.

Where I live

San Marcos, Texas. I moved here in 2025 to join the Texas State MPA program. Before that, I was in Phoenix (Arizona State) for a postdoc, and before that Chapel Hill for my PhD. North Carolina to Arizona to Texas is a slow drift south. I am running out of south.

What I think about

Public finance, mostly — how state and local governments raise and spend money, and how the structure of that system shapes who can afford to live where. The Hays County series on Southbound 35 is the long version of this interest applied to one fast-growing place.

Outside of work, I think about golf more than I should. The Scheffler / Ecclesiastes post is probably the clearest evidence of that, but the LIV defectors post is the more rigorous one.

I am also a Christian, which shows up occasionally in the blog and is part of why the Ecclesiastes piece exists. The blog’s frame — “occasional detours into sports, politics, and religion” — is not a marketing line. It is the actual range of things I will get curious about and want to write up.

Other things

I went to UNC for undergrad and graduate school, so I follow Tar Heel basketball. I have an unofficial coaching-search tracker on GitHub from one particularly anxious recent year. I will not be writing about UNC basketball on the blog. I will, however, be writing about Texas State football at some point. They are good and getting better.

I was an Eagle Scout. I still think about knots.

How to reach me

Email is best: scottlangford@txstate.edu.

I am on Bluesky more than X these days, like much of the public administration academic world.

If you read Southbound 35 and want to suggest a topic, an angle, or a correction, send a note. I read everything.