In this last session of our iTalks Series on data literacy in the public sector, we are receiving Gaby UMBACH, Part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute (EUI) where she leads the Global Governance Programme’s research area on ‘Knowledge, Governance, Transformations’. She will tell us more about statistical and data literacy in policymaking.

 

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About the speaker: At the EUI, she is also Co-Principal of the Interdisciplinary Research Cluster on ‘Crisis of Expert Knowledge and Authority’. She is a non-resident Visiting Fellow of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Innsbruck and CIFE/LUISS Guido Carli and Visiting External Examiner at the Department for Public Policy of the University of Malta. She is academic advisor and author of the Enlightenment 2.0 programme of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and involved in the ESPAS Futurium Expert Group on Horizon Scanning.

Since 2022, she is Associate Editor of Cambridge University Press’ Data & Policy and Area Lead for ‘Policy & Literacy for Data’ of the Data for Policy Community. She is Editorial Board member of the International Journal Evaluation and Program Planning and Board member as well as Academic Advisor of the Institute for European Politics in Berlin. From 2017 to 2018, she  worked as a policy analyst at EPRS responsible for research methodologies and strategic academic outreach. From 2015 to 2022 she was Book Review Editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies and, from 2015 to 2016, member of the EUI’s Ethics Committee for which she drafted the EUI’s Code of practice on free speech.

She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cologne, where she was Senior Research Associate of the Jean Monnet Chair for Political Science and of the Seminar for Social Policy from 2000 to 2014. In 2009, She received the Stiftung Demokratie Best PhD Thesis Award for outstanding research on democratic decision-making within the EU’s supranational polity.

Her current research focuses on the interaction between knowledge, evidence, data, and governance. She analyses how governance by and of knowledge influence transformations of politics and policies. This includes the analysis of measuring and the use of statistics as governance technique; data-based governance; data and evidence literacy in policy-making; evidence-informed policy-making; multilevel and anticipatory governance: socio-economic as well as eco-social policies: and sustainable development.

Prior to joining the EUI in 2010, her research focused on EU integration studies; Europeanisation; multilevel and new modes of governance; policy co-ordination; environmental, employment and socio-economic policies; economic governance and cohesion policy; and EU enlargement. Read more...