I am a Professor in Public Management in the School of Public Policy at University College London (UCL).
My core research interest is people analytics and people management in government: using data from original surveys, administrative records and field experiments for more evidence-based management of public servants.
I frequently collaborate with governments and international organizations – such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank – in this research, and my research has led a range of government organizations to change and improve management practices.
My work has been published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Public Administration, Governance, Regulation & Governance, the International Public Management Journal, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and several national governments. My research has received over £1.5m in grant funding from research funding bodies and international organizations, and has won the 2018 Haldane Prize for the best article published in Public Administration. My latest books are ‘Government Analytics: An Empirical Guide to Measuring Public Administration’ (forthcoming with the World Bank), co-edited with Dan Rogger, and ‘Motivating Public Employees’ (published in 2019 with Cambridge University Press’ Elements Series), co-authored with Marc Esteve.
My current and most recent research projects include:
- ‘The Global Survey of Public Servants’ – a joint initiative with colleagues from the World Bank Bureaucracy Lab, the Stanford Governance Project (led by Francis Fukuyama) as well as Jan-Meyer Sahling (Nottingham) and Kim Mikkelsen (Roskilde) to undertake the world’s largest cross-country survey of civil servants and encourage governments to adopt civil service surveys as management instruments.
- ‘Training Executives to Enhance Employee Engagement in Government: Field Experimental Evidence from Luxembourg’ (2022-2025) – a GBP640,000 ESCR-FNR-funded project (with Ludivine Martin, Jan Meyer-Sahling and Kim Mikkelsen) to assess in a field experiment whether executive engagement training enhances employee engagement in government.
- ‘Making Civil Services Work in Developing Countries’ (2016-2018) – a GBP400,000 British Academy-UK DFID funded project (co-led with Jan Meyer Sahling) to understand the effects of management practices on the attitudes and behaviors of public servants in developing countries. A summary of results can be found here.
- ‘Do Ethics Trainings Enhance Integrity in Government?’ (2019-2021) – a GBP350,000 Global Integrity-UK DFID funded project (co-led with Jan Meyer Sahling and Kim Mikkelsen) to assess with a multi-country field experiment whether ethics trainings of public servants enhance integrity in government.
- ‘Management Practices in National Statistical Offices in Latin America’ (2019-2021) – a US$200,000 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)-funded project (with Jose Antonio Mejia, Jan Meyer-Sahling and Kim Mikkelsen) to survey public officials in National Statistical Offices (NSOs) across Latin America and the Caribbean to better understand management practices and their effectiveness in NSOs.
Previously, I was an Associate Professor and an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at University College London (UCL), a Visiting Scholar at Sciences Po, the LSE Fellow in Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a Visiting Research Scholar in the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and an Economist with the World Bank. I received my PhD in Government from the LSE.