Personal details

• Name: Dr Jenny Lewis
• Department: School of Political Science, Criminology & Sociology
• Institution: The University of Melbourne
• Country: Australia
• Highest Qualification: PhD (1997, The University of Melbourne)
• Home Page: http://www.politics.unimelb.edu.au/aboutus/lewis.html

Network Related Grants (1999 - present)

• 2003-4 VicHealth, Small Research Grant ($22,600): 'Social connectedness and policy development: modelling strategies and measures' (Lewis, Considine and Baraket)
  
  Summary: Local relationships and social structures are often the key to prosperity and well being. While nation states struggle to influence and steer the local effects of global trends, the importance of local processes and institutions in supporting health and well being has increased. This has been recognised in Victoria by recent state government initiatives, including the establishment of Primary Care Partnerships, the introduction of Neighbourhood Renewal projects, and the creation of a new Department of Victorian Communities. While there is now much interest in "social connectedness", the concept is not well developed as a tool of analysis and policy making. There is confusion in relation to possible interventions that might help generate community engagement and social capital, and improve health and well being. This project seeks to address this gap by reanalysing the key explanations of social connectedness, and then constructing models to explicitly link together types of social connectedness, forms of policy development, and impacts on health.
• 2002-6 Australian Research Council, Discovery Project Grant ($456,000): "Fostering innovation inside government: the role of structural and personal networks in improving innovation performance among politicians and bureaucrats" (Considine and Lewis)
  
  Summary: The purpose of this project is to map, analyse and explain how politicians and bureaucrats use personal contact networks, allied with institutional networks to foster innovation. We aim to chart the innovation pathways inside government by comparing the formal processes of deliberation with accounts of actual information sharing, 'know-how-trading' and advice-giving among participants. We will identify those with the strongest records in producing policy and program innovation through the use of a performance evaluation instrument. We then plan to identify the way those who apparently succeed at innovation have alternate strategies for switching between or combining personal contact networks and institutional networks. We expect to be able to distinguish the roles of these different networks in shaping issue identification, the traffic in solutions, and the building of support for chosen options. By combining analysis of the two different network types and implementing the study across six independent governmental systems, we will be able to provide a general account of the performance attributes of governmental innovation systems. This will enable us to show how differences in network architecture influence both the path to innovation and the strategies of politicians and bureaucrats seeking to become more innovative.
• 2001-5 VicHealth/ Department of Human Services Public Health Fellowship ($500,000)
  
  Summary: Networks and partnerships are emerging as the new ideal models of governance and service delivery around the world. In Victoria, there is now an emphasis on working in collaboration to improve service delivery and policy development, strengthen communities and ultimately, improve population health. However, there is little understanding of how these models of coordination and collaboration work and what they can achieve. Do they improve service delivery and health policy processes? Do they strengthen communities, generate social capital and so improve health? This research aims to answer these questions by focusing on networks and partnerships as key means for creating linkages and collaborations between policy, services and communities.
• 2000 Australian Research Council, Small Grant ($5,400): "Narrative structure, communication and policy innovation: a comparison of political and professional networks" (Considine and Lewis)
  
  Summary:We aim to map and explain the linkages between communication, network structure and policy innovation within political and professional fields. In doing so, we will join together two distinct research traditions to explain policy change or blockage: - (1) the mapping of interactions, communication, and "know-how trading"; and (2) the structure of actors' perceptions of the innovation process. The expected outcomes include improved conceptual clarity of network structures in policy innovation, a better understanding of links between communication, networks and policy innovation, improved methods for undertaking research on the network-innovation connection, and a new strategy for theorizing "who innovates?" and "why?".

Network-related Publications (1999 - present)

• Considine, M and Lewis, JM. (2003) 'Bureaucracy, network or enterprise? Comparing models of governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand', Public Administration Review, 63(2): 131-140.
• Considine, M and Lewis, JM. (2003) 'Networks and interactivity: making sense of front-line governance in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia', Journal of European Public Policy 10(1): 46-58.
• Lewis, JM (2002) 'Partnerships in sickness and in health: redefining state-profession relationships in Australia, Britain and the Netherlands', in (Considine M, ed) Knowledge, networks and joined-up government, conference proceedings from the Structure and Organisation of Government Research Group of the International Political Science Association, Melbourne, May.
• Considine, M and Lewis, JM (1999) 'Governance at ground level: the front-line bureaucrat in the age of markets and networks', Public Administration Review, 59(6), 467-480.

Career Ten Best Publications

• Lewis, JM, Marjoribanks, T and Pirotta, M. (2003) 'Changing professions: General Practitioners' perceptions of autonomy on the frontline', Journal of Sociology 39(1): 44-61.
• Marjoribanks, T, and Lewis, JM (2003) 'Reform and autonomy: perceptions of the Australian general practice community' Social Science and Medicine 56: 2229-2239.
• Considine, M and Lewis, JM. (2003) 'Bureaucracy, network or enterprise? Comparing models of governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand', Public Administration Review, 63(2): 131-140.
• Considine, M and Lewis, JM. (2003) 'Networks and interactivity: making sense of front-line governance in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia', Journal of European Public Policy 10(1): 46-58.
• Lewis, JM (2002) 'Policy and profession: elite perspectives on redefining general practice in Australia and England', Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 7(Suppl 1) S1: 8-13.
• Lewis, JM (2000) 'From "Fightback" to "Biteback": the rise and fall of a national dental program', Australian Journal of Public Administration, 59(1): 84-96.
• Lewis JM (1999) 'The durability of ideas in health policy making' in (D Braun & A Busch, eds) Public policy and political ideas, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 152-167.
• Considine, M and Lewis, JM (1999) 'Governance at ground level: the front-line bureaucrat in the age of markets and networks', Public Administration Review, 59(6), 467-480.
• Lewis, JM and Considine, M (1999) 'Medicine, economics and agenda setting', Social Science and Medicine, 48(3): 393-405.
• Spencer, AJ and Lewis, JM (1988) 'The delivery of dental services: information, issues and directions' Community Health Studies, 12: 16-30

Awards and Fellowships

• 2001-2005 VicHealth/ Department of Human Services Public Health Fellowship
• 2000 Marshall E Dimock award for best article in Public Administration Review in 1999 (with Mark Considine). Public Administration Review is the leading journal for public sector reform, governance and public admininstration. We were the first Australian researchers to win this award.
• 1997-2000 National Health & Medical Research Council Public Health Post Doctoral Fellowship

Biography

Dr Jenny Lewis is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in both the Centre for the Study of Health and Society and the School of Political Science, Criminology & Sociology. She has been at the University of Melbourne since returning from London in 1998, where she was a Visiting Fellow at the King's Fund while undertaking research on a National Health and Medical Research Council Post Doctoral Fellowship.

She has published widely in academic journals, has taught public policy, health policy, and research methods, and spent five years working in state government in Victoria. Her main research interests are public policy - particularly health policy, new forms of governance and administration (especially networks and partnerships) and professions. In 2002 she was nominated to the Editorial Board of Public Administration Review.

Her current research is centred on network structures and theory and she is examining collaborative approaches to governing and delivering services in health, and analysing policy networks and strategic partnerships. She is also working on a book on the politics and governance of health.