PROFILE

Naomi Aoki (PhD, Public Administration) is an academic specializing in public administration and management. She is currently a professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy (GraSPP) at the University of Tokyo (UTokyo), Japan, and was formerly at the National University of Singapore (NUS) (August 2011-March 2020). She is a recipient of teaching awards from both NUS and GraSPP and was one of the 2021 University of Tokyo Excellent Young Researchers. She serves as an advisor to UTokyo Economic Consulting, Inc.

As a researcher, Aoki has addressed emerging issues in public administration and management through an interdisciplinary fusion of approaches. Her recent interest is to utilize psychological theories to investigate what makes the public-sector use of articifical intelligence trustworthy, and she has published her research on this topic in Government Information Quarterly and Computers in Human Behavior. She is a member of several editorial boards for peer-reviewed journals: Public Administration (since January 2021), the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration (since March 2022), the Public Administration Review (since January 2023), and Public Administration and Development (since February 2023).

As an educator, Aoki teaches public management from a global, comparative perspective, which has characterized her career path over the past decade. Her full-time teaching career began in 2011 at NUS, where she spent two years in the Department of Political Science, mainly teaching undergraduate Singaporean students, and she later moved to the university’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy where she taught graduate students. Aoki also taught in the school’s executive education programs for professionals in Singapore and abroad. At UTokyo, she delivers public management courses in both English and Japanese for graduate students and professionals. She continues to offer lectures for executive education and civil service training programs for global clients.

To date, she has taught students and professionals from over 90 countries/economies. The map below indicates their places of origin, based on the information provided by them or program organizers.

Aoki received her PhD in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2010. Prior to pursuing a doctorate, she worked for the World Bank (2003-2006) as a consultant and earned diplomas from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (MA, 2003) and American University’s School of International Service (BA, 2001, Hons).

Her interview article, “Promoting Administrative Intelligence in Pursuit of Better public Administration and Management,” can be found here.