We are truly happy to announce that the Spring Term 2021 Ragnar Nurkse Visiting Professor will be Hiroko Shimada-Logie from Kyoto University’s School of Governance. She is one of the most distinguished and best-known experts on Japanese public personnel policy, in practice and in theory, with a deep understanding of both the Japanese and Western civil service, a most sophisticated analyst of personnel issues, challenges, and future developments, and an outstanding academic speaker as well. It is a great honor, pleasure and privilege to finally welcome her, after previous attempts did not work out due to her busy schedule, to our department.
A graduate of Kyoto University as well, one of the top three in Japan, and of Oxford, Professor Shimada was a government official for 33 years, mainly involved in personnel policy, and mostly with the core institution charged with this area, the legendary National Personnel Authority (人事院), last as Deputy Director General of the Human Resources and of the Remuneration Bureau. She briefly served as Professor at Ritsumeikan University before, and she has also held a senior diplomatic post at the Permanent Mission of Japan to the International Organizations in Geneva. At Kyoto University, she teaches Personnel Policy and Civil Service Law as a practitioner. This April, her book, Impartiality: The Bureaucratic Consequences of Political Leadership was published with Gigakusha Publishing, Tokyo. Several of Professor Shimada’s positions in academe and civil service have been firsts for women, including the professorships in her respective departments.
As usual, Professor Shimada will co-teach the “Implementing Governance in a Diverse Globalized World” with Professor Wolfgang Drechsler during Spring Term – with a Japan focus, of course –, as well as give a public lecture on a topic of her special area, interact with students, and consult and discuss with colleagues. Seeing the challenges of the pandemic, she has agreed to join the Nurkse Department in person if the situation permits, or virtually if this would still be necessary.
Professor Pan Suk Kim, former Minister of Public Management of the Republic of Korea, who was to be the 2020 Nurkse Professor and whose teaching was unfortunately postponed due to Covid-19 regulations, will join us in Spring Term 2022.