Ostrom's Workshop colleagues watch her Nobel speech

Friends and colleagues gathered this morning at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis on campus to watch co-founder, colleague, and IU professor Elinor Ostrom deliver her Nobel Prize lecture in Stockholm.

The speech, streamed online on the Nobel Prize Web site, is a major component in winning the prize as it gives the Laureate the world stage to explain her prized work.

Ostrom’s speech explored the history of the economic governance of the common pooled resources and how her research dispelled the notion that only private or public arrangements are possible.

Ostrom is best known for her work considering the governing of the commons, or a shared piece of property. She showed that there are different ways to divide common resources, like fish in the ocean.

Ostrom will formally accept the Nobel Prize at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. The ceremony will be streamed online at www.nobelprize.org.

See tomorrow’s IDS for a look at daily life in the Workshop post-Nobel prize as well as an explanation of Ostrom’s work.