A Personal Perspective on Doing Good Research Seminar Series - Professor Richard M. WALKER (只提供英文版本)

About the Speaker

Professor Richard M. WALKER

Lee Shau Kee Foundation Chair Professor of Public Administration, 
School of Graduate Studies and Department of Government and International Affairs 
Head of the Department of Government and International Affairs
Director of the Lingnan University Institute for Advanced Study, Institute of Policy Studies and Governance and Bureaucracy Lab

 

Biography

I am the Lee Shau Kee Foundation Chair Professor of Public Administration, Head of the Department of Government and International Affairs, and hold a courtesy appointment in the School of Graduate Studies at Lingnan University. I also serve as Director of the Lingnan University Institute for Advanced Study, the Institute of Policy Studies and the Governance and Bureaucracy Lab.

I am a scholar of public administration with a focus on citizen-government relationships and the effective management of government. To address these questions, I draw on experimental methods, integration studies and computational social science. I am an Associate Editor at Public Management Review and have been a member of the editorial boards of most leading public administration journals. My research has been supported by grants and foundations in several international regions. I have received Best Article Awards and the 2025 H. George Frederickson Award for Career Contributions to Public Management Research from the Public Management Research Association (PMRA). I am an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK).

My research has been cited in President Biden’s Financial Year 2023 Budget and the U.S. Budget Guidance for Federal Agencies alongside Swedish legislation, the Portuguese Parliament and agencies including the European Commission, OECD, Office of the European Union, WHO, and the World Bank.
 

Abstract

I will share with students and colleagues my journey from a vocational first degree to becoming an awarded professor. I will discuss how spending around two-thirds of my academic career in Hong Kong has shaped my research focus and career. I will share how, as a social scientist, the context in which I found myself helped to shape a key aspect of my research agenda, particularly on replication. I will also show how my research moved from qualitative to quantitative methods and, more recently, to laboratory experiments and computational social science techniques. These methodological developments ensure that I continue to ask important questions central to the study of public administration and the effectiveness of government and citizen-government relationships.