Kayla Schwoerer, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in Public Administration at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. She received her PhD in 2022 from Rutgers University - Newark (USA), where her dissertation on government transparency, information usability, and citizen-state interactions received the Best Dissertation Award (2023) from the Section for Women in Public Administration, American Society for Public Administration.
Drawing on experimental, computational, and qualitative methods, her work bridges public administration, digital governance, communication, and design science to examine how new and emerging technologies, including AI, algorithms, and social media, are transforming public governance and the relationship between governments and citizens.
She is the founder of the Governance & Digital Experience (GovDX) Lab, an interdisciplinary research initiative connecting scholars, governments, and civic technology organizations to improve digital governance through evidence-based research and co-design. She serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the OECD-supported project "Digital Transformation of Public Procurement in Austria," is a Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for Democracy & Technology's Equity in Civic Technology team, and is a Research Fellow at the Center for Technology in Government (CTG). She has held academic appointments in the United States, the Netherlands, and Brazil, including at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), Utrecht University, and the University at Albany (State University of New York).
Her research has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), Government Information Quarterly (GIQ), Public Administration, and the American Review of Public Administration, among others.
