Katarzyna Radzik-Maruszak

Katarzyna Radzik-Maruszak is a Professor in the Department of Public Administration at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin, Poland. She serves as both Director of the Institute of Political and Administrative Sciences and Head of the Department of Public Administration. She holds a habilitation degree (2019) and has led numerous national and international research projects, including those funded by the National Science Centre (NCN) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

• PhD in Political Science, UMCS (2010)
• Habilitation in Political Science, UMCS (2019)
• LL.M. in Law, UMCS

Her research focuses on comparative public administration, local governance, citizen participation, and sustainable urban development, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe and the Arctic. She has conducted extensive empirical research in countries such as Poland, Finland, the UK, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. Her recent work explores participatory budgeting, advisory councils, and transnational cooperation in remote urban regions. She has published in journals such as Critical Policy Studies, Politics and Governance, and Studia Regionalne i Lokalne, and has co-authored a 2025 open-access monograph on sustainable urban development in the European Arctic.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong thematic focus on citizen engagement, local co-governance, and democratic innovation, with a methodological emphasis on qualitative research and comparative analysis. She investigates how local institutions evolve, how citizens participate in decision-making, and how governance models differ across national contexts.

• Award of the Minister of Education and Science (2021)
• First Prize in the Czesław Mojsiewicz Competition (2022)
• Multiple Rector’s Awards from UMCS for research and teaching
• First Prize for best doctoral dissertation from Wolters Kluwer Polska (2011)

She has supervised and collaborated with numerous researchers and has led externally funded projects such as Ponad granicami (NCN OPUS-LAP, 2025–2027) on refugee integration and Milczący świadkowie (NCN OPUS, 2022–2025) on youth engagement in local governance. She has also contributed to transnational projects like SUDEA on sustainable development in the Arctic, funded by NCN and DFG. She is an active member of the Polish Political Science Association (PTNP), where she chairs the Public Administration Section, and serves on the editorial board of Ocean & Society. She has also served on expert panels for NAWA and the Polish Fulbright Commission.

She is involved in several research teams and networks, including the SUDEA project team on Arctic urban development and collaborative governance research with scholars from Tampere, Prague, and other European institutions. She has participated in summer universities and Erasmus teaching missions across Central Europe.