King's College London

Maia King and Barbara Piotrowska received the Honourable Mention Award with fellow scholars Ruth Dixon (University of Oxford) and Rozana Himaz (University College London) from the Political Studies Association’s Executive Politics and Governance Specialist Group.

Their paper, Strategies for Public Administration Research: Insights from the Scholarship of Christopher Hood, was presented at the Political Studies Association’s 2026 conference held in Oxford. It draws on their experience co-authoring with Hood - the distinguished public administration scholar who passed away last year - identifying the distinctive methodological and research strategies in his scholarship that can enrich both social science broadly and public administration specifically.

Last year, Dr King and Dr Piotrowska received the 2025 PSA Mackenzie Book Prize for The Way the Money Goes, co-authored with Hood and Iain McLean (University of Oxford). The book takes a detailed look at what happened to the UK’s fiscal constitution - the framework for planning and controlling public spending - under three different governments from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s.