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Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Utrecht School of Governance.

Core themes in his research are: effects and antecedents of transparency, citizen trust in government, experimental methodology, impact of social media on government.

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Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Utrecht School of Governance. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration and Organizational Sciences at Utrecht University (BA 2005) and a degree in Law (LL.B. 2007) from the same university.

Stephan graduated cum laude in the Research Master in “Public Administration and Organizational Science”, a programme of Utrecht University, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Tilburg University (MSc 2007). From September 2007 Stephan has been working as a PhD-candidate at the Utrecht School of Governance. Besides writing this dissertation, Stephan published articles in Public Administration Review, Government Information Quarterly, Information Polity, Policy & Internet, and Bestuurswetenschappen. Further he taught courses on governance and supervised several theses. In 2009 he was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago during a semester to collaborate on a research project on transparency.

In his dissertation "Transparency and Trust: an experimental study of online disclosure and trust in government" several types of transparency are being examined with regard to their effect on trust in government organizations. Stephan's PhD research has been co-financed by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. From 2007 till 2009 Stephan worked part-time as a junior policy adviser at the Ministry. He wrote several policy-reports on transparency and on e-participation and public service delivery.

In 2010 Stephan received a grant for a post-doctoral research project after winning the “NIG postdoc competition” organized by the Netherlands Institute of Government. As of 2011, Stephan is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Utrecht School of Governance where he continues to work, on an international comparison on the determinants of governmental transparency. He is also involved in contracted research projects and teaching.

Dissertation
• Grimmelikhuijsen, S.G., (2012), Transparency and trust. An experimental study of online disclosure and trust in government. PhD thesis, Utrecht University.

International publications (peer-reviewed)

• Grimmelikhuijsen, S.G. & A.J. Meijer, (2012), The Effects of Transparency on the Perceived Trustworthiness of a Government Organization: Evidence from an Online Experiment. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, advance access, 21 pages.

• Grimmelikhuijsen, S.G. & E.W. Welch, (2012), Developing and Testing a Theoretical Framework for Computer-Mediated Transparency of Local Governments. Public Administration Review 72(4), 562-571.

• Meijer, A.J., Grimmelikhuijsen, S.G. & G.J. Brandsma, (2012), Communities of Public Service Support: Internet Facilitated Peer-to-Peer Cooperation in the Public Sector. Government Information Quarterly 29(1), 21-29. 

• Grimmelikhuijsen, S.G., (2012), Linking transparency, knowledge and citizen trust in government: an experiment. International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(1), 50-73.

• Grimmelikhuijsen, S.G., (2011), Being transparent or spinning the message? An experiment into the effects of varying message content on trust in government. Information Polity 16(1), 35-50.

Stephan is involved as a teacher in the courses "Introduction Governance and Organization" and "Governance and Policy". Further he supervises bachelor theses of students in the public management field, as well as Economics students interested in governance and public management.