EGPA 2025 Conference

The EGPA 2025 Conference will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, UK from 26 to 29 August 2025.

The Annual Conference of the European Group for Public Administration will be organized in close cooperation with the University of Glasgow.

The EGPA 2025 Conference plenary sessions and panels will be articulated around the focus theme: "EGPA at 50: Prospects for Public Administration across Europe."

The EGPA Conference is organized around several activities: plenary sessions, seminars (PhD symposium, French-speaking seminar, and thematic ones), permanent study groups’ sessions (23 EGPA Study Groups), and side meetings (EAPAA meetings for accreditation, EGPA Steering Committee Meeting, Meeting of the Permanent Study Groups co-chairs and collaborative projects’ meetings). 

A series of panels will be coordinated by the EGPA members and key EGPA/IIAS partners.

The European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) is the major learned society in the domain of administrative sciences on the European continent, and a regional group of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS). It supports the development of the IIAS and provides a major contribution to the achievement of the institute's mission: improving public governance research, education, and practice. 

EGPA aims at being the European Platform for Public Administration, associating specialized researchers and practitioners, by:

• Organizing and encouraging the generation and exchange of knowledge on developments in the theory and practice of public administration.
• Contributing to the development of comparative studies on public administrations from a European perspective.
• Facilitating innovation in ideas and models, methods and techniques relating to public administration.
• Fostering the development and consolidation of a community of experts of PA, grouping together recognized scholars, young researchers, and practitioners.

The University of Glasgow has been changing the world since 1451. We are a world top 100 university and a member of the prestigious Russell Group of leading UK research universities.

Our people have always been at the forefront of innovation, including eight Nobel Laureates, two UK Prime Ministers, three First Ministers of Scotland, 10 Fellows of the Royal Society and 11 Fellows of the British Academy. Our past achievements inspire our current world changes.

As a globally connected university, we work in partnership with others across the world to advance global solutions to real-world problems. We are proud to be founding member of the university networks Universitas 21 and The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.

We are committed to tackling the most pressing global challenges facing humanity and the natural world. We are delivering against the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030. We were the first European university to declare it would divest from fossil fuels by 2024 and the first in Scotland to declare a climate emergency. We are committed to playing our part in working with the policy community - locally, nationally and internationally - to find solutions to the challenges they face.

We look forward to welcoming you to Glasgow for the EGPA 2025 Conference.

Dear colleagues, delegates, and participants,

Chères et chers collègues, délégués et participants, 

Welcome to the EGPA@50 Anniversary Conference – Glasgow 2025!

Nous vous souhaitons la bienvenue au Congrès du 50^e anniversaire du GEAP – Glasgow 2025 !  

The European Group for Public Administration/Groupe européen pour l’administration publique team, in close and friendly partnership with the nice team of colleagues led by Dr. Ian C. Elliott at the University of Glasgow, Centre for Public Policy, supported by the Glasgow Convention Bureau, are delighted to welcome you all to the fourth most ancient university in the Anglophone world, established as early as 1451, a major research-led university which belongs to the club of the World Top 100 Universities.

This prestigious academic institution is the perfect place for an exceptional edition of our EGPA yearly gathering: in 2025, we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of EGPA! In fact, the genesis of EGPA started before 1975, from 1968, with several European conferences hosted at Speyer Hochschule, Germany, by Fritz Morstein Marx, then followed by Heinrich Siedentopf. It is in 1974 that a group of founders composed of Arne F. Leemans, Sabino Cassese, Neville Johnson, F.F. Ridley, Kauko Sipponen, Jerzy Starosciak, Klaus König and others agreed to establish the EGPA. This officially started operating a year later, in 1975, as a small and vivid network of passionate researchers, based in Brussels, in connection with the IIAS/IISA.

The first EGPA Conference took place in Warsaw, when it was behind the “iron curtain”, to assert Europe's unity. Our first, long-serving president was Arne F. Leemans (1975-1987). Since then, our organization has been led by successive presidents, Sabino Cassese (1987-1990), Hugo Van Hassel (1991-1994 and 1996-1998), Jacques Ziller (1995-1996), Ignace Snellen (1998-2001), Werner Jann (2001-2004), Geert Bouckaert (2004-2010), Wim van de Donk (2010-2013), Edoardo Ongaro (2013-2019), and myself (since 2019). Throughout this time the EGPA has grown and flourished thanks to the dedication of our successive Steering Committee members, and to the hard work, great team spirit and warm friendship of hundreds of successive Permanent Study Groups co-chairs. Since the turn of the Millenium, the EGPA has become the leading European learned society for administrative sciences. We bring together, in a genuine spirit of collegiality and inclusiveness, experienced academics and early career researchers who specialize in the comparative study of public institutions, public governance and public services from related disciplines, including public law, public administration, public management and organizational studies, public policies, political science, sociology and history.  

The EGPA is much more than a wonderful cross-border forum for academics to present and discuss research and prepare high-level scientific publications. The EGPA is an intercultural community of citizens, those engaged in research, who are driven by the quest for scientific excellence, and those who serve as practitioners driven by the Public Service ethos. Together we are committed to a double ambition: advancing Public Administration as an interdisciplinary field aimed at improving the comprehension and explanation of how our societies and their problems are governed and administered; and improving the sense and quality of Public Administration as a skilful professional practice, an activity indispensable to the democratic and effective functioning of our polities, economies and societies, and to the well-being of our fellow citizens. 

Our EGPA Conferences in Lisbon (2022), Zagreb (2023) and Athens (2024) were great successes, with over 500 delegates from 30 countries attending each event. These figures demonstrate the vitality of the EGPA community and our position as the most important and most contributing one within the IIAS network. At those conferences we addressed the related topics of “the Role of Public Administration for the Sustainable Future of our Societies” (Lisbon), and then “Steering European Union through poly-crises storms” (Zagreb). Indeed, since the beginning of the present century, the EU, its Member-States, and the wider European continent have experienced very turbulent times, including major environmental, economic, institutional, and geopolitical crises, which we faced with courage, agility, and resilience. These “perma-crises” challenge our governments, and the capacities of our public institutions, to continue delivering high-quality public services through the crises and afterwards to our citizens. They must do so in a constant and adaptative manner, without compromising the quality-of-government or the rule-of-law/Rechtstaat/Etat de droit. 

Last year in Athens, the cradle of democracy, we focused on “Strengthening Democratic Governance for Better Public Policies and Services“. In our turbulent times we face severe democratic backsliding and concentration of power in some countries. In other countries we see a strong demand for renewed democratization through more participative and even deliberative democratic systems to truly “co-create” public policies. In addition, we are confronted with the massive new challenge caused transnationally to the rule-of-law and to our fundamental rights and individual freedoms by the exponential development of Big Data powered by Generative Artificial Intelligence (a topic discussed at the Trans-European Dialogue Conference between EGPA and our sister organization NISPAcee, hosted in Dubrovnik in March 2024). It is clear and essential that we focus our collective attention on protecting and reinforcing the democratic nature of our governance, policymaking and public services’ provision.

For the present EGPA 50^th Anniversary Conference hosted by the University of Glasgow, the Steering Committee and the local organizers have easily agreed on a topic “de circonstance”; “EGPA at 50: prospects for public administration across Europe”. This topic will enable us to look back at the achievements of the past 50 years and to look forwards to the European Perspectives for Public Administration (EPPA) for the next 50 years. This will be done in our Plenary Sessions, in the hundred and more panels of our Permanent Study Groups, in our dynamic French Speaking Seminar, in our PhD & Junior Researchers Symposium, and in the other ad hoc special panels we have organised. Given the historic status of Glasgow as a transatlantic port city, we believe it is fitting to host one of the special Trans-Atlantic-Dialogues that EGPA has developed with the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) at our annual conference. It will be a pleasure to welcome our US friends for a TAD17 in Glasgow after the successful TAD16 at Roskilde University, Denmark, in 2022. We will also welcome a special NISPAcee-EGPA panel co-organized with our friends from Central and Eastern Europe. Finally, we will welcome our colleagues from Asia in panels dedicated to topics of common interest, as we did at our previous conferences, in Zagreb and Athens.

The EGPA Steering Committee and I are confident that our fellow EGPA members, both familiar and new colleagues, as well as the upcoming talents from all universities across our continent, will respond to our diverse Calls for Papers and will join us to celebrate, in Glasgow, the 50^th Anniversary of EGPA.

But – since there is always a “but” at some point in our lives – we are all aware that there will be a great, a major, an irreplaceable absence at our anniversary conference: Dr Fabienne Maron. Or dearest Fabienne – one of my best friends since 1999, and my perfect right-hand alter ego for six years – tragically and unexpectedly passed away in the latest days of 2024, while working from home, together with Dr Ian Elliott and me, to put our Glasgow Conference on good tracks. Our sorrow is immense and so is the loss to our organization. The irony of life is that Fabienne was planning to celebrate with us in Glasgow her 25 years of distinguished service at IIAS and as EGPA Executive Secretary. A French writer that Fabienne liked to read, Jean d’Ormesson, once wrote that “life is a feast in tears”. At our Glasgow conference, the whole EGPA family, “united in its diversity” as Europe is, will celebrate its 50^th anniversary, commemorate in the appropriate manner Fabienne’s immense and unforgettable contribution to EGPA, and look towards the future: a feast in tears, indeed! That is what we owe to Fabienne’s memory…

Jean-Michel Eymeri-Douzans
EGPA President/Président du GEAP

Dear friends and colleagues,

We are delighted to welcome you to the University of Glasgow for the EGPA2025 conference on "EGPA at 50: Prospects for Public Administration across Europe" from 26-29 August 2025. 

The 50th EGPA conference gives us the opportunity to celebrate the many successes of EGPA over the last five decades and to honour the legacy of those who have contributed to EGPA throughout this time. It also gives us pause and reflect on how we can support the next generations of public administration academics and researchers.

I am delighted that this event will be hosted by the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Glasgow. Our mission, "to build collaboration between the research and policy community, by sharing evidence, nurturing skills, creating space for fresh thinking and preparing the next generation of policymakers", speaks directly to the aspirations of the conference theme. It is also 25 years since the EGPA conference was last in Glasgow and this will coincide with the 850^th Anniversary of the City of Glasgow. So there will be much to commemorate and to celebrate!

Dr Ian C. Elliott
Chair of the Local Organizing Committee

The University of Glasgow Founded in 1451, the University is the fourth oldest in the UK and the second oldest in Scotland and has more listed buildings than any other university in the UK, and was named Scottish University of the Year in The Times & The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022.

Located in the heart of the bustling West End of the city; the university is only 2 miles from the City Centre and 8 miles from Glasgow International Airport. The neo-Gothic 19th century campus is set in beautiful, breathtaking surroundings and is one of the city’s greatest icons. The EGPA 2025 Conference will be hosted in three of our academic buildings which are all conveniently located within a five-minute walk of each other and with easy access to the subway and other public transport options.

Electronic Travel Authorisations (ETA's) will be mandatory for travel to the UK and are being introduced in several stages for different nationalities, over the next few months.

The following link is the best overview, where visitors can find official information and apply: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-an-electronic-travel-authorisation-eta

Another helpful link, which details key deadlines for groups of visitors (by country), is as follows: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-when-you-can-get-an-electronic-travel-authorisation-eta

Each individual visitor is responsible for ensuring they have their own correct authorisation to enter the UK. As such, we are not able to provide any individual advice, but would encourage you to direct queries to the official links above, which also include the option for visitors to web chat with the appropriate authority.

For inquiries, please contact the organizers at info@egpa-conference2025.org.