The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis combines teaching, research, and related activities where faculty, visiting scholars, and students have opportunities to participate in productive scholarship. Our Visiting Scholars are expected to participate in both our Y673 Seminar and Colloquium Series, but they will also have substantial time to pursue their own program of study and writing. Our primary concern is to ensure that Visiting Scholars are able to bring their research projects closer to publication during their stay in Bloomington.
Apply to the Long-Term Visiting Scholars Program
DANIEL DeCARO (August 2010–April 2013), PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher and visiting scholar at the Ostrom Workshop and the assistant director for IU's Interdisciplinary Experimental Laboratory. There, Daniel is working to apply his formal expertise in Applied Social and Cognitive Psychology to institutional policy evaluation, design, and implementation. Daniel is especially interested in the relation between participatory forms of human governance and individuals’ commitment to the goals and rules inherent in such institutional settings. As such, his research examines the behavioral and economic implications of stakeholder participation in institutional design and implementation. Currently, Daniel’s work uses laboratory- and field-based experimental research methodologies to examine three important topics of such institutional psychology: (1) everyday rule acceptance and task performance (e.g., at home, school, work and civil society), (2) social justice-based judgment and decision making in economic and institutional settings, and (3) the psychological mechanisms behind stakeholder-run institutions (i.e., self-governance), in such domains as community markets and community-based natural resource conservation in developing nations. ddecaro@indiana.edu
JAMPEL DELL'ANGELO (Fall 2012) is enrolled in a double PhD program in International Cooperation and Sustainable Development at Sapienza Università di Roma-CIRPS and in Environmental Sciences at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-ICTA. He holds a MS in Environment and Development at the London School of Economics, a Master II in Energy and Environment Management at Università di Roma La Sapienza, a Graduate Certificate in International Health at Curtin University of Technology, and a BS in Environmental Economics at Università degli Studi di Siena. In his PhD research, Jampel applies, and modifies, the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to two different case studies: (1) watersheds preservation and resettlement of Tibetan nomads in Qinghai’s rangelands and (2) the decision-making processes of geothermal electric energy power production development and its effects on the water basin of Mount Amiata in central Italy. The principal aim of his visit at the Ostrom Workshop is to develop a deeper understanding of the IAD framework, explore the possibility of methodological variations, and apply this to his case studies. jdellang@indiana.edu
IRENE INIESTA-ARANDIA (September 24–December 23, 2012) is a PhD candidate in Ecology and Environmental Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). She is a member of the Social-Ecological Systems Laboratory at the Ecology Department of UAM. She holds an MSc in Biology at Lunds Universitet and an MSc in Ecology at UAM. In her PhD research, she focuses in the ecosystem services provided by semi-arid watersheds and the formal and informal institutions behind its management. She uses different methodological approaches with a special emphasis on social network analysis. At the Ostrom Workshop, she wants to develop her work on the structures of collaboration networks among different water users and municipalities in water management. iiniesta@indiana.edu
TIAGO DA SILVA JACAÚNA (August 15, 2012–March 29, 2013) is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Universidade Estadual de Campinas), Brazil. He holds an MS in Sociology and a BS in Social Sciences at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM, Universidade Federal do Amazonas), and a BS in Economics at the Laureate International Universities (UNINORTE, Centro Universitário do Norte). His PhD dissertation is about institutional analysis using network analysis for comparing different institutions (formal and informal) responsible for controlling nature resources at the Brazilian Amazon, specifically at the State of Amazonas. At the Ostrom Workshop, Tiago plans to build a framework for his thesis that integrates institutional analysis with social network analysis. During his visit, Tiago will receive a scholarship from the CAPES Foundation, an agency under the Ministry of Education of Brazil, in order to conduct part of his doctoral research.
CLAUDIA KONRAD (February 11–April 28, 2013) (Vitae) is a PhD candidate in Economic and Social Sciences at Trier University, Germany, and scholar of the Transformation Research Cluster of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Berlin. Her thesis deals with the analysis of networks concerning the management of forest resources and cooperation between institutions at the local, national, and international level. The case study refers to the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, located in the Amazon basin of Ecuador. The study comprises both the informal institutions of socio-ecological systems at the local level and the formally existing governance strategies at the national and international level, focusing on the rules in use. Claudia’s interest in this thematic and geographical area results essentially from her work as a junior consultant for the German Development Service at the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment. She holds a MA in Cultural Anthropology from Hamburg University. At the Ostrom Workshop, Claudia will focus on developing a research design that integrates the IAD Framework with social network analysis.
JESPER LARSSON (October 2010–October 2012), Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, received a PhD degree in Agrarian History in October 2009. In his research about agricultural systems, he has used theories about the management of common-pool resources. As a postdoc at the Ostrom Workshop, he would like to develop the knowledge of commons and common-pool resources from a historical perspective. One goal is to describe and compare the complex mix of organizations governing common-pool resources in the Nordic countries from 1500 to 1850. The aim is to increase the comprehension of the importance of these organizations and to emphasize how these organizations were a part of the feudal society.
GUOQING LI (August 2012–August 2013) is the director of the Urban Policy and Urban Culture Research Center, Institute of Urban & Environmental Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The center conducts research for the central and municipal governments in China and recommends policies on social development and urban planning. Guoqing received his PhD from Keio University in Japan. He is currently a Fulbright Scholar and plans to work on a project entitled “System and Practice of Homeowners’ Self-management in United States.” In recent decades, homeownership has become an important aspect of family life for most families, particularly middle-class families, in China. Guoqing plans to examine how American homeowners establish the board of homeowner directors in local communities to implement effective management of their properties. He also plans to apply Ostrom’s theory of “Common Pool Resources” to explore the issue. During his visit in the United States, Guoqing plans to observe the activities of homeowner volunteers in Bloomington and develop policy recommendations for homeowners in China to self-manage their properties effectively. liguoq@indiana.edu
TIMOR SHARAN (October 5–November 15, 2012) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter, UK. His research focuses on the political economy of network politics in post-2001 statebuilding in Afghanistan. His thesis explores how networked elites came to be constituted in the post-2001 state and how contestation, cooptation and conflict between competing elites over the state shaped the nature of the post-2001 statebuilding. Timor holds an MPhil in Development Studies from University of Cambridge and a BA in International Relations and Politics from University of Essex. He has worked more than four years for different donor agencies and research policy organizations in Afghanistan including DFID and USAID. At the Ostrom Workshop, Timor will develop further his theoretical framework on the complex relationship between informal networked elites and formal institutions of the state in post-2001 Afghanistan.
ARTHUR SHERWOOD (January–August 2013), PhD, is an Associate Professor of Management at the Scott College of Business at Indiana State University. He earned his MBA, MA, and PhD (2002) from IU's Kelley School of Business and his BBA from the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He joins the Workshop to blend his research and practical experience regarding cooperative business models with the robust frameworks found at the Workshop. He particularly has an interest in governance/leadership of cooperatively owned enterprises as well as how democratically owned organizations cooperate to share knowledge. During his time as a visiting scholar, he will focus his efforts on leading a project that links researchers, practitioners, and the literature to uncover priority research questions related to cooperatives helping to set a multiyear researcher agenda. All of this framed by Workshop thinking. He is currently collaborating with visiting scholar, Keith Taylor, to implement a series of roundtable discussions that will focus on these issues and culminate in a multistakeholder forum taking place at the Ostrom Workshop in coordination with the Scott College of Business. asherwoo@indiana.edu
KEITH TAYLOR (August 2012–August 2013) is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois in the Department of Human and Community Development (PhD expected Fall 2012). Keith’s research emphasis is on the utilization of the cooperative institutional model for community development and democratization. His recent research project has explored the effect wind energy ownership models on local level communities, and how communities might harness such projects for enhancing development outcomes. Keith's efforts at the Ostrom Workshop are focused on plying Bloomington School thinking toward the creation of a coordinated research agenda on the US cooperative model. taylokea@indiana.edu
JOSEPHINE VAN ZEBEN (January 1–December 31, 2013) received her PhD in Law and Economics at the University of Amsterdam in May 2012. Her main research interests center around the division of regulatory power between different regulators. Thus far, her work has focused on the European Union and in particular its environmental and climate change policies. Her research at the Ostrom Workshop is funded by the Niels Stensen Fellowship and is called: “A Polycentric Europe?”. The goal of the “Polycentric Europe” research project is to embrace, rather than simplify, the unprecedented complexity of modern regulation. By acknowledging the possibility of overlapping jurisdictions, a polycentric governance model extends not only to the public actors but also encompasses private and voluntary actors. Moreover, it enables us to consider overlapping “realms of responsibility and functional capacity” of different jurisdictions. The potential of polycentric analysis for assessing the functioning of the European Union has not yet been fully explored within the existing legal, and law and economics, literature. A general theoretical framework for mapping the system of governance within the European Union will be developed through which the functioning of specific policy areas can be assessed, particularly: climate and energy policy, public health, and the regulation of the Eurozone. jvanzebe@indiana.edu
YUKUN ZHU (August 2012–August 2013) is a PhD candidate in Public Finance at Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. His research interest is to evaluate economic and social efficiency of environmental policies and strategies in China and undertake a comparison study with those in post-communist European countries, aiming to purse the institutional constraints influencing governance of environment and natural resources in China. He has undertaken research on the interest’s conflicts between the governments, mining companies and the residents during the process of resources extraction from the perspective of property rights allocation of mineral resource. If the decision-makers should take vulnerable groups into account, such as minorities and low-income groups of the western region in China, environmental governance must be specially designed. At the Ostrom Workshop, he will work on one of his PhD papers, analyzing institutions and policies to carry out the principle of justice and efficiency during the formulation and implementation process of the environmental laws. yukzhu@indiana.edu
