As a member of the Arts & Humanities department, Nicholae Cline works primarily to support the collection development & management, outreach, teaching & learning, and research and scholarly needs of the Libraries and the Media School and philosophy and gender studies departments. They are committed to building connections, cultivating relationships, and removing obstacles to access and agency, and so much of their work centers around institutional change and justice work (including the many concerns related to diversity, equity, and inclusion).

Nicholae's research interests include ethics and epistemology; critical theory and philosophy; animal liberation; queerness and gender studies; feminism; critical race and ethnic studies (particularly indigenous history and mixed-race identity); diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education; activism and social justice; and care work. Some of their publications and presentations include: “I know it when I see it: Care and Feeding of Controversial Collections" (with Erika Jenns and Leanne Nay) at the National Diversity in Libraries 2016 Conference, and "Like Our Lives Depended on It: Reflections on Embodied Librarianship, Counter-Spaces, & Throwing Down" from the 2018 collection In Our Own Voices, Redux. Their most recent publication is "Leaning on our Labor: Whiteness and Hierarchies of Power in LIS Work" in the collection Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory, forthcoming from MIT University Press in 2021.

Nicholae was selected to participate in the Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups in 2016, and served for many years on the IU Libraries Diversity Committee (including 3 years as co-chair, during which the committee wrote the Diversity Strategic Plan [pdf]). At the campus level, they currently serve on the Bloomington Faculty Council Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee and on the advisory boards for the LGBTQ+ Center and First Nations Educational & Cultural Center. Nationally, they have served on the Stonewall Book Awards and the Over the Rainbow Book List committees of the American Library Association for several terms. In 2020, they founded the We Reads project along with some amazing friends from We Here, which highlights and celebrates literature by BIPOC authors.

Nicholae is from rural southern Indiana, central Kentucky, and western West Virginia, and grew up haunting every library they could find within driving distance of where they lived. After working for a few years as a bookseller, and as they were finishing their BA, their intuition led them towards librarianship.

Before taking on their current position, Nicholae served the IU Libraries as Visiting Digital Research Librarian and Media Services Coordinator. They received their MLS (Digital Librarianship specialization) and BA in English literature (focus on poetry/creative writing and philosophy) from Indiana University.