My name is Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, associate professor and research director at the Utrecht University School of Governance. I am a public administration scholar doing research with an aim to make public organizations work better.

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Three main questions drive my research:

How can citizens trust governments?

In a time of seemingly raging citizen distrust of government, the ultimate question to me is “can public organizations increase trust by providing them with better information and being more transparent?” A collection of my publications on this theme can be found here.

How does AI & technology change how governments work?

Government organizations are increasingly using complicated algorithms and big data to support their decision-making. How can we ensure that bureaucrats use such systems in a responsible and trustworthy manner? Publications are collected here.

How can we use insights and methods from other disciplines to improve our understanding of the public sector? 

Together with colleagues I co-authored this piece on behavioral public administration (open access). We describe behavioral public administration as the interdisciplinary analysis of public administration by drawing on recent advances in our understanding of the underlying psychology and behavior of individuals and groups. Publications are found here.