I am delighted to welcome you to our first INLOGOV alumni e-magazine. We are planning to produce three editions a year, to help our alumni and academics engage together. In this first issue we are focussing on the topic of ‘Leadership in Turbulent Times’. Local public services have borne the brunt of the Covid pandemic in the last two years, closely following the decade of austerity in the UK. How can public servants and organisations survive and thrive in this difficult context?
One key response is adapting local leadership. In the INLOGOV Local Government Podcast’s first edition, INLOGOV Assistant Professor Dr Timea Nochta talks to alumna Kate Herbert about her Master’s dissertation research outlining leadership priorities responding to adverse circumstances. In the ‘Meet Your Peers’ section, we share summaries of three recent master’s dissertations which provide useful insights around the leadership characteristics and behaviours required of senior council officers in response to adverse circumstances, what is meant by ‘good’ public sector leadership, and practical systems leadership.
Secondly, we need to get better at engaging with and learning from local people. As part of our commitment to continuous professional development, we have launched a new MOOC (Massive Open On-line Course) on Transforming Citizen Participation. On this free four-week course, you can discover effective techniques to engage with stakeholders, manage new ideas, co-create solutions, and investigate opportunities across the public sector.
Finally, we can’t ignore the potentially transformative impact of the COVID pandemic on local government in the UK and beyond. In the ‘Staff in the Spotlight’ section, we introduce Dr Louise Reardon, Associate Professor in Governance and Public Policy at INLOGOV, and share her recent edited book on ‘Living With Pandemics’. The book discusses how this transformation was, and still is, manifesting on the ground across different places, policy areas, and for different people.
INLOGOV has a long history of innovation, built on a core mission of improving local services and supporting local democracy. Our students and alumni have always been a key part of this mission, bringing current issues and practice to our research, and exploring how this research should impact on policy and practice. I hope that our latest innovation, in the form of our new alumni community and this e-magazine, will help us as we pursue our enduring mission. Please do let me know what you think, how we can best further develop our alumni programme, and how you would like to be involved.
Jason Lowther - Director, INLOGOV