IRSPM O’Leary prize and Routledge lifetime achievement award 2026 - Winners announced!
Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
We are thrilled to announce the winners of the IRSPM Rosemary O’Leary Prize and IRSPM Routledge Prize for 2026!
The IRSPM Board of Directors is pleased to announce that Richard M. Walker, the Lee Shau Kee Foundation Chair Professor of Public Administration, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, is the recipient of the IRSPM 2026 Routledge Lifetime Achievement Award. This award honors scholars with sustained contributions to public management research.
During his distinguished career spanning more than two decades, Walker has been at the forefront of public management and key to linking West and East in public management. His main contributions relate to the study of innovation in public services and the measurement and determinants of public service performance. A prolific author, his work has garnered over 23,357 Google Scholar citations.
His long-standing involvement with IRSPM includes serving as an Editorial member for Public Management Review, a board member for IRSPM and as a conference co-Chair of IRSPM Conference 2016. Walker will present on his life's work at the IRSPM conference in Perth, Australia, in April. More about his career can be found here.
We are pleased to announce two “best article” winners of the 2026 IRSPM Rosemary O’Leary Award for excellent scholarship on women in public administration. Nominated articles were evaluated using the following criteria: significance, excellence in writing and communication, scholarly innovation, rigor, and implications for policy and practice. The following authors will present their award-winning research at the upcoming IRSPM conference in Perth, Australia, in April.
Paola Canestrini, Giovanna Galizzi and Benedetta Siboni co-authored "Addressing Gender (In)equality in the Health Sector. Gender-Responsive Budgeting as an accounting process for creating Public Value" , published in Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management. Adopting a case study approach applying multi-qualitative methods, this study explores the facilitating and hindering conditions that interact in the implementation of a gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) process for incorporating a gender perspective into the accounting system in the health sector, a gender segregated public sector. This research provides a foundation for advancing both the theoretical understanding and the practical application of GRB as a tool for achieving gender equality and creating public value.
Sara Rinfret, Sean McCandless and Bruce D. McDonald III co-authored “Learning from public administration faculty: Emotional labour, burnout, and solutions”, published in Public Management Review. Via a global survey of public administration faculty, this research addresses the intersection of emotional labour and gender issues among the public administration professoriate and provides a path forward for the academy as well as for researchers.
The Lectures and Award ceremony for these two IRSPM prizes will take place on 9 April at Building 32 Joondalup Campus, from 13:30 -15:00 pm.
The IRSPM board congratulates the winners for their outstanding contributions to research in our field!
We are very much looking forward to seeing you all during 8 - 10 April in Perth!
Sincerely,
Ileana Steccolini, President, IRSPM
Rosemary O’Leary, Chair of the 2026 O’Leary Award Committe