Suzanne J. Piotrowski, PhD (Bio)

Dr. Suzanne J. Piotrowski is a Professor of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University–Newark, Director of the Transparency and Governance Center (TGC), and Director of SPAA’s MPA programs. Dr. Piotrowski researches freedom of information, transparency, and open government issues with a strong focus on connecting with communities of practice.

In 2020, she became a co-principal investigator on a $2.3 million Smart and Connected Cities National Science Foundation Grant to make public services more equitable and efficient in the City of Newark, NJ. In 2018, Dr. Piotrowski was appointed by the Archivist of the United States to serve on the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee for a two-year term. She served as the independent assessor of the United States national action plan for the Open Government Partnership. She served as the conference chair and founder of the 1st Global Conference on Transparency Research (Rutgers University–Newark, May 2011). She has consulted with the World Bank Institute on an evaluation of Thailand’s Official Information Act and with the Carter Center on a project assessing how access to information differentially affects women.

Previously she served as the Deputy Dean (2015/16) and Chair of Faculty Development (2022/23) for the School of Public Affairs and Administration and during the 2009-2010 academic year she held the position of Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Chancellor at Rutgers University–Newark. While on research leave in 2017, she was an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Politics at University College London. She is a past chair of the American Society for Public Administration’s Section on Ethics and Integrity of Governance.

Dr. Piotrowski writes widely on public management, accountability, and transparency issues and publishes extensively in academic journals and edited volumes. She authored the book Governmental Transparency in the Path of Administrative Reform (State University of New York Press, 2007). In 2010, Lexington Books published Dr. Piotrowski’s edited volume Governmental Transparency and Secrecy: Linking Literature and Contemporary Debate. Her 2022, her coauthored project The Power of Partnership in Open Government? Multistakeholder Governance Reform and the Open Government Partnership (MIT Press’ Information Policy Series), received the 2024 Best Book Award from ASPA’s Section of Public Administration Research.