The public management team in the School of Business and Management – which also runs the Queen Mary University of London Masters’ programme in Public Administration – won a major contract with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in late 2013 to run a course throughout the month of February 2014 in collaborative policymaking and public leadership for emerging new leaders from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The participants are the first cohort of Fellows on what the Foreign and Commonwealth Office hopes will be a series of leaders in that country from the new generation. Britain has a longstanding commitment to assist Bosnia-Herzegovina and Queen Mary has been delighted to be able to play its part.
The Fellows on the FCO scheme are early to mid-career professionals in the public services, in politics, in business and in the media. We have been working with them to show what can be learned from Britain’s developing relations among the different nations and ethnic groups, and to develop their own skills in leadership, bargaining and negotiation and in policymaking processes that require working across organisational and community boundaries. Colleagues from across the School have contributed to the programme as well as distinguished external visiting speakers: we worked closely with colleagues from the School of Politics and International Relations, which has expertise on issues in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The programme also involved study visits to the House of Commons, to Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, to several departments of state in Whitehall, local authorities and voluntary organisations and the BBC. After the course, the Fellows will be working together in Bosnia-Herzegovina on follow up activities culminating in an event in Sarajevo in June. Thank you to all of our internal and external contributors, for assisting in what has been a fantastic programme!
The programme was led by Professor Perri 6, whose chair is in public management, and by Naomi Britton, the School’s Executive Education Administrator. For further information, please contact Naomi Britton [N.Britton@qmul.ac.uk].