Jenny Lewis

Professor Jenny Lewis is Professor Emerita in Policy and Society in the School of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne. She holds a BSc, Graduate Diploma in Recreation Planning, Master of Environmental Studies, Graduate Diploma in Public Policy, and PhD, all from the University of Melbourne. Her distinguished career includes roles as Professor of Public Policy, Founding Director of The Policy Lab, Director of Scholarly and Social Research Impact, Academic Lead for Research Impact—where she developed the ‘five facet’ model of research impact—Associate Dean (Research), Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2013-2016), Senior Research Fellow (VicHealth), and Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences.

Lewis's research specializations encompass public policy, governance, policy design, public sector innovation, networked and marketised governance, and policy implementation. She is the author of six books, including Academic Governance: Disciplines and Policy (2013), Innovation in City Governments: Structures, Networks, and Leadership (2017), Networks, Innovation and Public Policy: Politicians, Bureaucrats and the Pathways to Change Inside Government (2009, with M. Considine and D. Alexander), and co-editor of the Handbook on Measuring Governance (2024); she has also co-edited four other books and authored more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. Among her most influential publications are “Bureaucracy, Network, or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand” (2003, Public Administration Review, 630 citations) and “The Rise of Public Sector Innovation Labs: Experiments in Design Thinking for Policy” (2018, Policy Sciences, 553 citations). Her work has garnered over 7,500 citations on Google Scholar. Lewis has received the 2023 IRSPM Routledge Lifetime Achievement Award, two lifetime achievement awards from professional associations, four international journal prizes, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. She served as President of the International Research Society for Public Management and the Australian Political Studies Association.

Professional Email: jmlewis@unimelb.edu.au