School of Public Administration

About School of Public Administration

Go to our website: https://www.gu.se/en/public-administration

The School of Public Administration at University of Gothenburg is a leading Swedish academic community of students, alumni, practitioners, faculty, and staff, developing and disseminating multidisciplinary knowledge about Public Administration and its environment.

We offer a variety of undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate programmes and courses. Faculty members also engage in a wide range of scholarly and applied research and community service with the goal of improving government and society in Sweden and abroad.

The department is the only one in its kind in Sweden. Currently being the only academic institution both teaching and doing research in the field of Public Administration.

Today there are five professors. During the time that postgraduate studies have been available, 24 doctoral theses and the same number of licentiate's dissertations have been produced and examined. With one exception all teachers now have PhDs and several hold associate professorships.

Public administration is well established internationally, even though SPA is the only university department in Sweden that offers postgraduate studies purely in the subject. When postgraduate studies in public administration commenced, its teachers were recruited primarily from political science and business administration. The process of creating a synthesis and developing the subject of postgraduate research studies has been underway since then. The result of this work is that public administration is now an independent subject.

Since the subject’s establishment phase has been completed, SPA has initiated a strategic process with the aim of establishing and developing networks with other disciplines that have some focus on public administration.