Jessica A. Shoemaker, Steinhart Foundation Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law, has been named a fellow of Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for the 2026-27 academic year.
Shoemaker will work as a Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellow, supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. She joins a cohort of 53 fellows selected internationally from leading scientists, writers, scholars, public intellectuals and artists.
As a fellow, Shoemaker will work on “Ground Rules: Property and the Making and Remaking of the American Countryside,” a book that examines private property law not as a quiet background condition, but as an active site of social design and democratic choice. The project explores how property rules shape rural landscapes, including through contemporary conflicts over farmland transitions, energy infrastructure and Indigenous land claims.
“The choices we collectively make about property rights profoundly shape who belongs where, who bears what environmental and social costs, and what rural futures are possible,” Shoemaker said. “The Radcliffe fellowship offers an extraordinary opportunity to develop this work in conversation with interdisciplinary scholars, artists and practitioners at a moment when rural places are being reshaped by climate change, energy transitions and renewed demands for land justice.”
Shoemaker is a legal scholar whose work explores how property law shapes human communities and environmental conditions across the American countryside. Her scholarship appears in leading journals, including Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Michigan Law Review and California Law Review.
She also co-founded and directs the Rural Reconciliation Project, an interdisciplinary research and engagement effort committed to telling fuller and more honest stories about rural America and advancing a clearer conversation about its past, present and future.
“Professor Shoemaker’s selection as a Harvard Radcliffe fellow is a well-deserved recognition of the ambition and importance of her scholarship,” said Richard Moberly, dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law. “Her work applies property law to some of the most consequential questions facing Nebraska, the nation and the future of rural communities.”
The Radcliffe Fellowship Program gives artists, scholars and public intellectuals dedicated time to pursue ambitious projects in an interdisciplinary environment at Harvard University. Throughout the year, fellows share works in progress with the Radcliffe community and the public while drawing on Harvard’s extensive research resources.
Shoemaker previously served as the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Legal and Resource Rights in the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. In 2021, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow to examine how property law has shaped agricultural land ownership in the United States.
For the full list of 2026-27 Radcliffe fellows, visit the institute’s website.
