Involving experts-by-experience in knowledge mobilisation can help to enhance impact on policy and practice, and support equality, diversity and inclusion. But it also creates risks and challenges that need to be considered and addressed.
These are some of the takeaways from an 18-month UKRI-funded Fellowship embedded at WCPP to support What Works Centres and other knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs) that aim to bridge the gap between academic evidence and policy making.
Key findings:
- Strategic, well-resourced, and inclusive approaches to involving experts-by-experience can help to enhance the relevance, impact and inclusiveness of knowledge mobilisation activities when certain conditions are met.
- Ensuring ethical and meaningful involvement of experts-by-experience is essential to maximising these benefits and minimising potential harm.
- Key challenges of this approach include navigating contrasting theories of change, risks to wellbeing, sustaining momentum, balancing individual experiences and external validity of insights, and ensuring ethical practices, including those related to remuneration.
The research found that the following practices can help overcome these challenges:
- Ethical practice (such as safeguarding, autonomy, remuneration, support and consent);
- Clarity and transparency about purpose, role and degree of participation;
- The development of a reciprocal and trusting relationship with experts-by-experience;
- Sufficient resource and time; consideration of this approach from the outset;
- A pathway to impact from the outset; and
- Consideration of equality, diversity and inclusion of who participates, why and how.
The Fellowship, led by Dr Rounaq Nayak, was hosted by the Wales Centre for Public Policy, with the support and advice of a working group made up of the Centre for Ageing Better, Youth Futures Foundation, the Centre for Homelessness Impact, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Modern Slavery Policy Evidence Centre.
Dr Nayak said, “Involving experts-by-experience in knowledge mobilisation is not just about inclusion, but about improving the relevance, legitimacy, and usability of evidence for policy.
“When lived experience is recognised as a form of expertise, it can challenge dominance assumptions, shape more grounded recommendations, and support better decision making. As knowledge brokers and facilitators, we have a responsibility to create spaces where different forms of knowledge can inform and influence policy in meaningful, ethical, and impactful ways.”
WCPP Senior Research Fellow, Amanda Hill-Dixon, said, “While knowledge brokers typically bridge the two worlds of academic research and policy/practice, a participatory approach requires navigating many more perspectives and sources of insight which can make the process both more complex and more rewarding.
“The insights from this Fellowship, along with those from our own practice at the Wales Centre for Public Policy, show how the involvement of experts-by-experience can, in the right circumstances, help to strengthen the work of knowledge brokering organisations. However, the risks associated with this approach that the research identified – including to lived experience experts themselves – must be considered and carefully managed.”
