Decolonising Public Administration: Workshop Series

Exploring decolonising approaches to public administration, delving into its nuanced implications for the scholarly discourse, curriculum development and real-world application.

As part of the 2025 IIPP Forum: Rethinking the State, the panel marked a culminating event of the Decolonising Public Administration series. The series explored decolonial perspectives and decolonising praxis efforts in public administration, governance, scholarship and policy. 

As part of the project, two policy hackathon workshops were held, designed as collaborative, hands-on, and creative engagements focused on equitable approaches to policy and systems design. The workshops brought together students, public officials, researchers, artists, activists, designers, and residents to collectively reimagine public institutions, governance, policy, and systems design through the lens of decolonial praxis, dialogue, and participatory action research. Over 40 attendees attended the two sessions.

The first workshop had an open focus and featured:

• Decolonising Communities and Public Spaces (Rev. Dr Professor Keith Magee)
• Decolonising Economics (Associate Professor Carolina Alves)
• Decolonising Digital Transformation (Nai Lee Kalema)
• Decolonising Governance (Visiting Professor of Practice Rowan Conway)

The second workshop focused on Health AI and Wellbeing with MIT Critical Data and HASTE:

• Decolonising Health AI (Senior Research Scientist, PI, and Dr Leo Anthony Celi, MD, MSc, MPH),
• Co-organisers: MIT Critical Data, PLOS Digital Health, Health AI Systems Thinking for Equity (HASTE), and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University School of Law

The final panel discussion brought together speakers from these workshops to reflect on their own experiences and work, exploring what decolonial perspectives offer to public administration, and what decolonising praxis looks like in practice. It was concerned how it is (1) understood and taught, (2) practised and researched, and (3) created and experienced - both within and beyond the classroom. Complementing the conversation, special remarks were delivered by Rohit Chopra, 3rd Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (2021-2025), and former Commissioner for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (2018-2021); and Sara Shafi ei, Vice Dean of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion for The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL. The panel had 115 attendees in person and over 200 online. 

Image credit: iStock