A 2L from Indianapolis has been awarded a prestigious graduate fellowship from The Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University.
Nick Clifford will begin a one-year Ostrom Fellowship in Fall 2023.
![Nicholas Clifford](https://blogs.iu.edu/maurerlaw/files/2023/03/clifford-nicholas-nick-254x300.jpeg)
“Year after year we are excited to welcome extraordinary students into our fellowship program,” said Emily Castle, Ostrom Workshop Assistant Director and Librarian. “The program has broadened the involvement of schools, leading to more interdisciplinary student cohorts working together.”
With Clifford’s selection, one of those schools is now the Maurer School of Law.
Nominated by Professor Gabe Goodwin and encouraged to apply by Professor Dan Cole, Clifford will use the fellowship to study the political and legal theory of the Anti-Federalists.
“In my research I will explore what the Anti-Federalists had to say about complex governance, the rule of experts, the size of republics, and finally, the problem of perpetuating good institutions,” Clifford said.
Named after the late Nobel Laureate Elinor “Lin” Ostrom and her husband Vincent, their namesake workshop formally began as The Center in Political Theory and Policy Analysis a half-century ago. The Ostroms believed ideas and theories must be considered through the lens of experience—that the critical connection is between ideas and what gets done. The Workshop has become the epicenter of commons governance, with research affiliates from around the nation and the world, Castle said. Current research has expanded from studying water and forestry governance, to opera sustainability and space governance.
Ostrom Fellows participate in the Workshop’s fall semester seminar and a service-learning project as well as attend the year-long Colloquium and Research Series.
Clifford earned his undergraduate degree in Law and Public Policy from Indiana University in 2020 before enrolling in the Maurer School of Law.
Clifford is currently a judicial extern with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.