Towards Relational Public Services Conference 2024

Towards Relational Public Services Conference 2024

Following on from the success of the inaugural Towards Relational Public Services conference at Northumbria University in June 2023, we would like to invite you to join us at this year’s conference on 12th and 13th June 2024.

This conference seeks to tackle a problem animating policymakers, service professionals and academics alike: in an increasingly complex world, how can public services and social interventions create and sustain positive lives for the people and populations they serve? There is increasing pressure for a radical change in the form and function of public administration, management and governance. Genuine social change – to deliver high-level conditions of societal wellbeing like quality-of-life, health, criminal behaviour or educational attainment or responses to climate change or energy shortages – are simply too complex to be delivered by top-down policymaking, target-driven management and contractualism, or more rigorously-evidenced social interventions. Human and relational services are better achieved and value better created by investing in the capability of public service systems and engaging meaningfully with the complexity of people’s lives and the communities they live in.

2024 Conference Streams

We will welcome submissions discussing relational approaches to Public and Civic Leadership in:

Engaged scholarship – education, relational knowledge exchange, and academic policy research - Melissa Hawkins

Managing complexity and outcome-oriented public service - Max French

Public Service Innovation: Data and Evaluation in Relational Public Management - Hannah Hesselgreaves

Digital citizens and communities - Rob Wilson

For more information, to register, and to upload submissions, click here.