This course will be conducted in “rotation”- modus, building on a flipped-classroom concept. This means that we ask you to prepare based on material that we make available over Learn@WU (texts, videos, and/or short preparatory assignments). In the interactive in-person sessions we will clarify core concepts and focus in detail on the questions that you have from your own course preparation.

“Interdisciplinary perspectives on public administration, governance, and policy”

We will collectively reflect on studies in the broad and interdisciplinary field of public administration, governance, and policy. In this collective reflection, we will discuss concrete studies and research ideas from PhD students and staff. Research projects in all possible stages are open to be discussed: initial ideas, work in progress, almost finished papers, and/or drafting Revise&Resubmit letters.

We welcome a broad range of discussion topics in the interdisciplinary area of public administration, governance, and policy. On request, the participating faculty can also give particular impulses on theory, research designs, data collection, qualitative and quantitative analysis.

External guest professors are invited, and will also join in the active feedback, discussion, and brainstorm processes.

•           Concrete feedback for own research ideas, work in progress, and research proposals
•           Insights in currently high-relevance topics, both from a scientific and practitioner perspective.
•           Reflection on a broad range of new methods applied in the field of public administration, governance, and policy
•           Advanced insights in publication process
•           Reference framework from peers and faculty with respect to managing own research agenda and priorities
•           Insights in successfully conducting (international) collaborative research projects

Preparation and attendance are required:

Preparation: submit materials in order to get feedback, and read materials of others to give feedback to others

Attendance: during the seminar, active and constructive participation in discussions

Participant can submit at least one (!) of the following formats:

1.       Full paper: A paper in an “almost ready” stage, for which you would like to get some feedback before submitting it to a journal. – We foresee some time to present, and we make sure that people can give detailed feedback. You submit the full paper. Potentially on the first page you can add some notes on which particular elements you expect  / desire some extra feedback + you can give some background with respect to target journal, etc. So share extra information that can make the feedback of others more directed, and thus potentially more effective.

2.       Research pitches: You present an idea for a study or funding proposal in a 5 to 7-minute pitch. The audience gets in brainstorm modus and shoots all possible ideas for methods, literature, references, ... maybe even collaborations,… etc. you can share a title, a short descriptive, and a 1-slide visual aid to pitch your idea. The focus is on harvesting the collective wisdom of the audience.

3.       R&R mirror: When you have received a Revise-&-Resubmit decision for one of your papers, and you can share it with the other participants, we will discuss ways to tackle in a constructive way various reviewer comments.

Other participants write short feedback notes, and we discuss them collectively.

a. Participation (50%)

b. Wrap-up presentation (on 16 October) and discussion of learning and action points of own contribution to the seminar (50%)

All WU registered PhD students can participate; Maximum of 10 WU PhD students. We rely on a self-selection of PhD students, based on relevance of own ideas and papers in the context of: Interdisciplinary perspectives on public administration, governance, and policy

For extra questions, please contact me on: jurgen.willems@wu.ac.at