Sebastian Jilke is the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He also co-directs BGL — the Better Government Lab — which is a joint research center of Georgetown's McCourt School and the Ford School at the University of Michigan. Dr. Jilke is also affiliated with the Office of Evaluation Sciences at the General Services Administration and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and, until 2025, was affiliated with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
His research applies insights from the behavioral sciences to public management and policy to study how government reforms affect public employees and the people they serve – especially with regard to access to public services and programs. He is also interested in designing and applying interventions to improve government effectiveness more broadly.
Professor Jilke has directly worked with and provided advise to a wide range of organizations, including the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the Social Security Administration, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, U.S. Department of Treasury/ IRS, and the General Services Administration, as well as nonprofit/advocacy organizations such as the Equal Rights Center, or Code for America and international organizations such as The World Bank. He has presented research to policymakers at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Chief Financial Officers Council, the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has also directly contributed to OMB policy guidance under President Biden.
Since 2022, Sebastian serves as co-editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM). Prior to that, he co-founded the Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, a not-for-profit, open-access journal, and served as JBPA’s editor-in-chief until 2021. Jilke is also co-editor of Experiments In Public Management Research: Challenges and Contributions (Cambridge University Press). In 2017, he received the Beryl Radin Award for the best article published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART).
Born in Germany, Sebastian received his master’s in public administration from Zeppelin University (Germany), and PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands).