Elinor Ostrom: an Intellectual Biography in discussion with Stephen Le

​In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics – honored for decades of fieldwork on how communities govern shared resources. From Swiss alpine pastures to Nepali irrigation systems, Ostrom documented ordinary people sustaining forests, fisheries, and water without state control or privatization.

​Vlad Tarko's Elinor Ostrom: An Intellectual Biography provides an accessible introduction to her body of work. Across five chapters, he walks the reader through Ostrom's research program: local public economies, polycentric governance, solutions to the commons problem, the design principles behind enduring institutions, and her wager that people can craft better rules through choice.

​We will be joined in discussion by Stephen Le, biological anthropologist (Ph.D., UCLA) and author of 100 Million Years of Food. His work and interests include organizational resilience, governance, community building, effective altruism, public health, and the application of evolutionary principles to real-world challenges.