Lianne Visser receives G.A. van Poelje Prize for best public administration dissertation
image: Lucas van der Wee
Researcher Lianne Visser has been awarded the G.A. van Poelje Prize for the best dissertation in public administration of the past year. It is a renowned award for doctoral research in public administration in the Netherlands and Belgium.
In her dissertation, Customized interactions: how street-level practitioners, managers, and policymakers accomplish and challenge the provision of customized social services, Visser examines how tailored approaches in youth care are realised in practice. She demonstrates that such customisation is shaped not only by the discretion of individual professionals or organisational structures, but above all by everyday interactions between colleagues, managers and policymakers. The Van Poelje Prize jury described the heart of her dissertation ‘an excellent and in-depth ethnographic study’.
Visser responded enthusiastically to receiving the award: ‘I am absolutely delighted with this prize. It feels like a strong recognition of the value of ethnographic methods in public administration. And of course, it is a great honour to be included among such an illustrious group of Van Poelje Prize winners.’
The jury also awarded an honourable mention to Emil Wolff for their dissertation Social Subjecthood: the inclusion of (post)colonial migrants in Dutch, French, and Britsh welfare states, 1945-1970, praising it as a thorough, engaged and exceptionally well-written historical and comparative analysis of the welfare state and exclusion.