Lianne Visser, former PhD candidate of the Department of Public Administration, has been awarded the 2025 Best Dissertation Award of the Public Management Research Association (PMRA). Her thesis is entitled: ‘Customized interactions: how street-level practitioners, managers, and policymakers accomplish and challenge the provision of customized social services’. The PMRA Best Dissertation Award encourages and rewards exemplary public management research at the doctoral level.
In her dissertation, Lianne Visser explores how customized services are created in youth care, not simply through the discretion of individual street-level bureaucrats or by designing the right governance structures, but in the ongoing interactions between peers, managers, and policymakers. It shows how customization requires constantly navigating the tension between structuring and granting autonomy. The award acknowledges the rigor and insight that ethnographic research can offer. This approach is demanding, but it provides a powerful lens on how public services work on the ground. In this way, her study contributes to a broader conversation about how public services can be more responsive, relational, and grounded in the realities of practice. Lianne’s PhD research was supervised by Prof. dr. Taco Brandsen, Prof. dr. Jan-Kees Helderman and dr. Peter Kruyen. Lianne now works as an assistant professor of public administration at Leiden University. The prize will be awarded in Seoul at the end of June.
The department Public Administration congratulates Lianne with this outstanding achievement!