Jana Blahak
Research Associate
From 01.10.2023
Since October 2023 I am employed as a research associate at the Chair of Public Administration. Between 2019 and 2022, I was involved in the Reinhart Koselleck Project (DFG) "Black Swans in Administration: Rare Organisational Failures with Serious Consequences" and wrote my PhD thesis on organisational failures of public administration in prevention measures against natural hazards within this framework.
Qualitative methods play an important role in my research. Furthermore, I have given the accompanying tutorial for the lecture 'Research Design II: Case Studies and qualitative methods' several times.
I completed my bachelor’s degree and one of my master’s degrees at Konstanz for Politics and Public Administration. I earned my second master’s degree at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers (USA). There I developed my interest in land use planning and how the implementation of this task is influenced by internal and external political influences on public actors.
My current research focus is on the role of public administration in urban disaster risk management for natural hazards and how lessons learned in this area can be applied to others, such as climate change adaptation.
CV
2020-2024: PhD student at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, Chair of Domestic Politics and Public Administration
2019-2022: Research assistant in the Reinhart Koselleck project (DFG) "Black Swans in Administration: Rare Organisational Failures with Serious Consequences"
2017-2019: MA Double Degree:
Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz
Public Affairs and Politics, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey
2013-2017: BA Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz
Research Interests
Disaster Risk Management
Causal process analysis
The Politics of Bureaucracy
The Role of Local Public Administration in Climate Change Adaptation Processes
Awards and Publications
Blahak, Jana. (2021). A critical junctures approach to disaster recovery policies – an idea whose time has come? International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 58, 102164. doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102164
DAAD funds for internationalisation, Excellence Strategy, for a research stay in Melbourne (2022)
Conferences, Presentations and Workshops
Participation in Process Tracing Methodology in Practice. ECPR Summer School, CEU, 26 Juli - 9 August 2019.
Administrative resilience – more than the adaption of bureaucratic structures in the face of changing conditions. Presented at the IIAS 2020 Conference: Public Governance for Climate Action after Covid-19 Online, 23 June 2020.
Hiding in Plain View – The Impact of Public Agencies on the Success of Efforts to Increase Urban Resilience. Presented at the Sustainable & Resilient Urban-Rural Partnerships (URP) Conference Leipzig, 27 October 2020.
Implementing disaster prevention policies on the local level –– a done deal? The case of development control in the peri-urban region of Melbourne. Presented at the PhD Symposium for Doctoral Students and Junior Researchers EGPA 2022, Lisbon, September 2022.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place - explaining local government failure to implement land use controls. Presented at the ECPR General Conference, Prague, 4-8 September 2023.
Teaching
SoSe 2024: 1. An organisational perspective on the challenge of addressing climate change (Seminar)
2. Legitimate administrative action or administrative failure? On the trail of the OZG (Proseminar)
WiSe 2023/2024 1. Proseminar: The Politics of Managing Natural Hazards
2. Advanced seminar: Process-Tracing: an applied method of management science