About
Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy
Dr. Anis Ben Brik is Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy, affiliated with the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Institute of Communication and Public Policy at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano. He founded and leads the Arab AI Governance Lab.
His research examines administrative capacity, discretion and implementation, the institutionalisation of evaluation and performance management, public management reform, and the regulatory capacity of states to govern AI. He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Program Evaluation in the Global South and The Oxford Handbook of Social Welfare in the Global South, both published in 2026.
He is Founding President of the Global South Evaluation Society and President of the MENA Evaluation Association. He teaches and supervises in Arabic, English and French, and has trained public officials in 21 countries. He convenes panels at the International Conference on Public Policy (IPPA) and presents at the IPSA World Congress, the APSA Annual Meeting and the IIAS Conference. At the United Nations he has served as Regional Partner for the Middle East of the NGO Major Group.
Founding President, Global South Evaluation Society. President, MENA Evaluation Association.
Editorial boards: Journal of Social Policy (Cambridge University Press); Gulf Studies (Springer).
Peer reviewer: American Journal of Evaluation; Evaluation; Evaluation Review; Public Administration Review; Policy Sciences; Governance; Social Policy and Society; International Journal of Public Administration.
Dr. Anis Ben Brik, Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy, studies administrative capacity: why governments that look alike on paper perform differently in practice. He is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, and the Università della Svizzera italiana, founded the Arab AI Governance Lab, and edited two Oxford Handbooks published in 2026.
Dr. Anis Ben Brik is Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy, affiliated with the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Institute of Communication and Public Policy at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano. His research examines how public organisations build delivery, coordination, analytical and regulatory capacity, with evidence from more than 30 countries across the Middle East and North Africa, the Gulf and the Global South. He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Program Evaluation in the Global South and The Oxford Handbook of Social Welfare in the Global South (both 2026), and the author of The Institutionalization of Evaluation in the Middle East and North Africa (2025). He founded the Arab AI Governance Lab and the Arab Observatory for Policy Evaluation Institutionalization, is Founding President of the Global South Evaluation Society, and has trained public officials in 21 countries. He holds doctorates from University College London and Ca' Foscari University of Venice.