MasterCraft Series – How can empathy be used in public service?
Insights from research and practice
This MasterCraft Series event discusses and highlights the role of empathy in the public service. Empathy’s critical interpersonal and societal role makes it highly relevant for public servants. Empathy research tends to focus on public-facing roles in the government due to the opportunities for empathy that personal interactions present. Much less is known about empathy in public servants who do not interact with the public. For example, some policymakers, policy advisers, analysts and regulators rarely have personal encounters with the people they serve.
In this event the presenters will discuss findings from their recent research project on empathy in non-frontline public servants and provide examples of how empathy can be used successfully in policy work and help benefit the public in meaningful ways.
Presenters
Dr Assel Mussagulova
Assel is a Lecturer in Public Policy and Public Administration at the University of Sydney. Her research interests lie at the intersection of public administration, human resource management, and public policy. Assel’s research focuses on what drives individuals to join public service and what sustains or hampers their desire to create public good while employed in the public sector. This includes individual differences, cultural, and larger environmental, factors, such as bureaucratic systems and economic conditions. Her bigger research agenda is about contributing to scholarship on building more efficient, empathetic, and attractive civil service systems.
Assel previously worked as a public servant, a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, and as a researcher in the field of career development.
Dr Colette Einfeld
Colette is a postdoctoral research fellow at ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific. She is interested in knowledges, evidence, and ethics in policy making, and how these are negotiated in approaches like nudge and co-design. Her research increasingly focusses on how different knowledges or epistemologies are considered in policy making in the Global South, specifically South East Asia. She also writes about methodologies and the experiences of ‘doing’ interpretive research.
Colette has also worked at the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU, and at the Melbourne School of Government at the University of Melbourne. She brings to her academic work over ten years of qualitative and quantitative experience working in applied research with businesses, governments, and not-for profit organisations, managing projects in the areas of media, health and welfare, finance, and energy.
Facilitator
Anthony Dusan, APSC
Participant benefits
- Hear from academics conducting research on empathy in public service about the recent developments in the academic literature and insights for practice generated from field research.
- Develop your ability to apply empathy in all aspects of your work.
- Consider how empathy is applied in your workplace and how its application can be kickstarted or enhanced.
Suitable for
All Staff
Category and User level
This learning experience aligns with the Working in Government Craft at the Foundation level.
Price
Free of charge.