Photo: WTIU News
The 2009 Nobel Prize winner in economics is a political science professor at IU who is best known for studying economic governance and the commons.
Time’s has named IU Professor Elinor Ostrom to be listed as one of The 100 Most Influential people in the World on Wednesday. Ostrom can add the honor to the Nobel Prize for economic sciences she won in 2009.
IU professor Michael McGinnis is the director of the ‘Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis,’ an office which Ostrom co-founded. He says Ostrom has a knack for forcing people to view the world differently.
“So I think one of the reasons that she’s been picked up as being influential is probably her role in the global climate debate. She’s really standing as a person that’s arguing for what she calls as a polycentric approach,” McGinnis says.
IU Clinical Professor Burney Fischer adds that Ostrom’s expertise crosses several disciplines. She has a skill for breaking down politics and policy in a way anyone can understand.
“It’s recognition that over her long career and the variety of things that she’s done,”Fischer says. “People are starting to see her in a different light, much broadly than they did before and so she can help people think out issues that we never would have thought about before from a collective action point of view.”
Ostrom has been an IU faculty member for more than 45 years.
