Collaboration with the Public Administration and Policy Group
The Public Administration and Policy group is an enthusiastic and ambitious group within the Department of Social Sciences. Our team is characterized by an open and inclusive atmosphere, and we are welcoming to new collaborations and partnerships, with governments or private parties, with colleagues from all over the globe, and with students who seek to improve their understandings of public administration and policy.
What do we do?
Our mission is to study the public governance of sustainability transformations in the interrelated domains of water, climate, food and agriculture under the slogan "Changing governance, Governing change". In our work, we build on a diverse set of political science concepts and theories and apply a diverse range of methods that we use whenever suitable for the research questions at hand, without being completely wedded to one such perspective or method. We take an active interest in the role of the state in sustainability governance and seek to think through innovative governance arrangements. The group is impact oriented and aims to contribute to scientific progress, to societal debates, and to policy practices.
Who do we work with - internationally?
We have an extensive network of international partners. Our staff members are active in high level United Nations expert bodies such as the IPCC and IPBES. We are very active in EU funded projects, welcome many international visitors for research stays, regularly host international workshops and conferences, are on the board of many international journals (Global Environmental Change, Ecology and Society), and have excellent connections to various institutions in the global South. Our frequent research partners include the University of East Anglia, KU Leuven, Stockholm Resilience Centre, CIFOR (Indonesia).
Who do we work with - nationally?
The Netherlands is a small country with very close collaborations between universities. This means that we regularly collaborate with like-minded groups at other universities. Part of this collaboration has been formalized in national research schools such as Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG) and the Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment (SENSE). We work together with multiple government actors such as ministries (Agriculture and nature conservation, Interior, Foreign Affairs, Infrastructure and Environment), regional and local governments, and government advisory bodies (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency). We also collaborate with NGOs, private and corporate organizations.
Within Wageningen University & Research
We are part of the section Sustainability Governance in the Social Science group. All staff members are embedded in the WASS graduate school. Through joint proposals, projects, education and co-supervision of PhD-students, we collaborate with various natural science groups from environmental sciences (on climate change, rural development, water management, ecosystem services), animal sciences (on circular agriculture), and plant sciences (on sustainable palm oil and seed governance).