Home
Research

Research

Decades of world-changing research programs and relationships

Research programs are the heart of what we do. In July 2016, we established our first program on “Environment & Natural Resource Governance,” followed by programs on “Cybersecurity and Internet Governance” (January 2017), “Data Management and Information Governance” (November 2017), “Political Economy Program” (formerly PELIO, January 2018), “Commons Governance” (August 2020), and the "Program in Food and Agrarian Systems" (June 2023). Additional research areas for new programs include space governance, financial organizations, public health, education, and international organizations.

Each research program constitutes in and of itself an attempt to bring different disciplinary perspectives to bear on governance challenges. But the greatest gains come from the synergic interactions between scholars and students working in different research programs.

Research on the Commons

Includes working groups on space governance and institutional resilience.

Internet Governance and Cybersecurity

Includes working groups on blockchains, cyber peace, and cyber ethics.

Data Management and Information

Includes working groups on artistic inspiration, data trust, and more.

Environment and Natural Resources

Includes working groups on energy and environmental justice and law and economics.

Political Economy

Includes working groups on ungoverned space and political economy of pandemics.

Food and Agrarian Systems

Examines the interconnections and outcomes of food, farming, and agrarian issues via lenses found in the social and natural sciences, as well as the humanities.

Space Governance Program

The Ostroms’ work has been adapted to a wide range of sectors and disciplines, from fisheries and forests to climate change and, more recently, to the final frontier.

Workshop Library

The Workshop Library is one of the premier resources for study on the commons, institutions, governance, and collective action.

Affiliated centers and institutes at IU and around the world

Find your next research topic and get inspired

Browse our library

Find books, dissertations, journals, and bibliographies to help you with your research.

Attend the WOW7 Conference

The Workshop on the Workshop in June 2024 is the 7th WOW conference to bring together leading governance experts from around the world to Indiana University in Bloomington.

Discover an upcoming lecture

Watch recordings and find upcoming lecture series with the world's leading governance researchers.

Become a Workshop Affiliate

Find collaborators and challenge yourself and others as a Workshop Affiliate.

Ostrom Workshop expands governance studies to outer space

For nearly 50 years, the Ostrom Workshop, based at Indiana University Bloomington, has explored how communities around the world govern themselves and their resources. Now, that exploration extends to the final frontier of outer space.

The Ostrom Workshop and partners at Laval University in Canada have received a $200,000 grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York to expand their study of governance in space. The new grant builds on a previous $200,000 grant received in 2020 to work on the problem of space debris in Earth’s orbit.