Dr. Adam Hannah is a public policy scholar, Senior Lecturer, and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, where he serves as Convenor and Program Director of the Master of Governance and Public Policy, one of Australia's leading postgraduate qualifications for public servants and policy practitioners. His research focuses on how governments draw upon ideas and knowledge while negotiating capacity constraints in the policy process. This includes examinations of policy responses to health crises such as vaccine hesitancy and antimicrobial resistance, as well as the role of ignorance, non-knowledge, and misinformation in generating policy failures, including the Robodebt scandal. Hannah is available for PhD supervision on topics encompassing the politics of health policymaking, policy capacity challenges, major health policy issues like workforce shortages, and the influence of ideas in health and welfare policy.

Hannah is a recipient of the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) for his project entitled Health workforce crisis: understanding political capacity for policy change, which analyzes the political factors constraining and enabling health workforce policymaking in Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. He has published extensively in high-ranking international journals including Nature, Public Administration, Policy Sciences, Policy and Society, and the Australian Journal of Political Science. Key publications include COVID-19: talk of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ lets governments off the hook (Nature, 2022, with Katie Attwell and Julie Leask); Ideas and crisis in policy and administration: existing links and research frontiers (Public Administration, 2022, with Erik Baekkeskov and Tamara Tubakovic); Media actors as policy entrepreneurs: a case study of “No Jab, No Play” and “No Jab, No Pay” mandatory vaccination policies in Australia (Policy Sciences, 2024, with Katie Attwell et al.); The promises and pitfalls of polysemic ideas: ‘One Health’ and antimicrobial resistance policy in Australia and the UK (Policy Sciences, 2020, with Erik Baekkeskov); and Ignoring harm, saving face: non-knowledge, senior public servants and the Robodebt scheme (Australian Journal of Political Science, 2025, with Linda Courtenay Botterill). These contributions underscore his impact on understanding crisis policymaking, policy capacity, and health governance.

Professional Email: a.hannah@uq.edu.au