From 13-17 September 2015, WIPCAD PhD fellows Basanta Thapa and Emanuele Frezza participated in a workshop on “Innovation in Local Government”, a joint PhD training hosted by the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses at the University of Athens and organized by the European Local Government Network (EUROLOC) and European Urban Research Association (EURA), within the framework of the EU-funded COST Action IS1207 “Local Public Sector Reforms: An International Comparison”, chaired by WIPCAD professor Sabine Kuhlmann.
The PhD training took place on the Greek island of Spetses and hosted more than 20 PhD students from all over Europe and from different disciplines but with a common focus on reforms and changes in local democracies and local public sector institutions. With the guidance of senior researchers, each PhD student presented his ongoing research project and received feedback from a mixed group of specialists in the field of local public sector reform. The four-day training school format included lectures from guest professors, such as Prof. (em.) Dr Hellmut Wollman (Humboldt University of Berlin) and Nikos Hlepas (University of Athens), on the current trends in local governments as well as the upcoming challenges the latter have to face in a rapidly changing multi-level governance system.
Basanta Thapa presented his research project “Big Data in Government: Discursive proto-institutionalization in European Metropolitan Governments” and Emanuele Frezza discussed his own research focusing on “Co-management and Accountability in Welfare services: A cross-country comparative study of home elderly care”. Both presentations were discussed by Prof. Dr. Bas Denters (University of Twente) and received valuable feedback during the following discussions.
The ECPR/EUROLOC/EURA/COST Summer School 2016 will be held in September 2016 at the University of Potsdam and co-hosted by WIPCAD under the heading of “Contested Administrations – Challenged Politics: Addressing Wicked Problems at Local, National, and International Levels of Government”.