Director

Professor Richard M. Walker 

I am a scholar of public administration with a focus on citizen-government relationships and the effective management of government. To answer these questions I draw on lab and survey experimental methods, integration studies and computational social science.

I serve as an Associate Editor at Public Management Review and am or have been a member of the editorial boards of journals including Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration, Policy and Society, and Public Administration Review. My research has been supported by grants from the Chiang Ching-kou Foundation (Taiwan), the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), Research Grants Council (Hong Kong), Public Policy Research Fund (Hong Kong) and the National Science Foundation (China). I received the 2014 Kooiman Award for Best Paper in Public Management Review, the 2015 Radin Award for Best Paper in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the 2019 Louis Brownlow Award from Public Administration Review and the 2025 H. George Frederickson Award for Career Contributions to Public Management Research from the Public Management Research Association (PMRA).

I have consulted for APEC, OECD, UNDP and governments in Hong Kong and the UK. My research impact is also seen through citation. This includes in President Biden’s Financial Year 2023 Budget and the US Budget Guidance for Federal Agencies alongside Swedish legislation, the Portuguese Parliament and agencies including the European Commission, OECD, Office of the European Union, WHO, World Bank and a range of think tanks and governments in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Italy, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey, UK, and USA (from Overton).

I was President of the Public Management Research Association 2018-2020 (and was a Board Director 2007-2011) and was a Board Member of the International Research Society for Public Management (2012-2017).

I am currently the Lee Shau Kee Foundation Chair Professor of Public Administration and Head of the Department of Government and International Affairs, and Director of the Lingnan University Institute for Advanced Study (LUIAS) and the Governance and Bureaucracy Lab of Lingnan University. Prior professorships were held at the City University of Hong Kong (Head of the Department of Public Policy, Associate Dean and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences), University of Hong Kong, and Cardiff University (UK). I have held visiting appointments at Delft University of Technology, Monash University, Rutgers University and Xi'an Jiaotong University and was a Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management (a research centre of the UK ESRC/ESPRC). I am an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

My CV can be found here, and please see my Lingnan Scholar’s profile for information on my research.