Biography

Oscar Nowlan is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also a Research Fellow at LSE Cities and has taught classes on public policy and regulation at LSE. Oscar's experience spans both academia and policy, and he has worked previously as a policy official in central and local government in the UK, including roles in HM Treasury, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and London Borough of Barnet.

Oscar's research examines how governments are organised, how they choose to deliver public services, and how they are held accountable for service performance. His PhD has focused on how blame is allocated and contested in public services and executive politics, as well as the strategies policymakers use to avoid blame in such contexts. At EUI, Oscar's primary research aims to explain patterns of government insourcing (i.e. the returning of formerly outsourced public services back to direct provision within the public sector) in the UK and elsewhere. His work has been published in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

Research projects, clusters and working groups

• Bayesian Inference for Qualitative Evidence

Mentor

• Tasha, Fairfield