Situated in Belgium, in the heart of Western Europe, KU Leuven has been a centre of learning for nearly six centuries. Today, it is Belgium’s largest university and, founded in 1425, one of the oldest and most renowned universities in Europe. KU Leuven is a research-intensive, internationally oriented university that carries out both fundamental and applied research. It is strongly inter- and multidisciplinary in focus and strives for international excellence. Following the integration of the university colleges, the ‘entire’ KU Leuven counted more than 65,000 students (2025). The largest student populations are found in the faculties of Economics and Business, Medicine, Engineering Technology, Arts, and Law. Students from approximately 165 countries study at KU Leuven.
The KU Leuven Public Governance Institute has as the mission to gain knowledge and insight regarding politics, administration and public policies on local, regional, federal, European and international levels. We intend to make scientific contributions to an improvement in the policy-making, organization and management of public administrations. The KU Leuven Public Governance Institute is an internationally oriented and interdisciplinary research institute that focusses on different aspects of public governance. Both fundamental and applied research are part of our activities, with special attention on theory, empirical research and practice. Comparative research in particular is one of our core competencies.
Public Governance Institute focuses on three distinguishable but partly overlapping clusters within the public governance domain: 1) Politics, citizens and policies: this research cluster focuses on the understanding of the relationship between governments, citizens and policy practices; 2) Administrative organization and HRM: this cluster focuses on the changes in the governmental landscape and the way in which the government handles its human capital; 3) Management of information, performance and finance: this cluster focuses on research about methods and approaches to manage, use and exchange information by governments in the policy, management and financial cycles. This may be within as well as between administrative organizations, but also across and between governments.
