Over the last decade, a plethora of bodies have emerged within universities in the UK and beyond that seek to broker evidence produced by their respective organisation to decision-makers. This phenomenon is linked with both the research impact agenda (for instance the Research Excellence Framework in the UK) and universities’ emphasis on civic missing and the public value of research.
The first step of this project was to survey the university policy engagement landscape in the UK, providing a catalogue and categorisation of the then 46 policy engagement bodies that existed. This was supplemented by documenting the stories that staff from these bodies told about their emergence, how they work, and how they seek to influence policy and practice.
The research identifies four types of university policy engagement body - the policy impact support office, the knowledge brokers, the policy evidence producers, and the demand-led relationship builders – and the different strategies and tools they employ to mobilise evidence to policy. We find that the differences between types of university policy engagement bodies reflects the different interpretations of what policy engagement and impact means, as well as different opportunities, resources and capabilities for policy engagement. They are all, however, renegotiating what role universities could and should play in informing policy decision-making and improving social outcomes.
Papers
Durrant, H. and MacKillop, E. M. (2022). University policy engagement bodies in the UK and the variable meanings of and approaches to impact, Research Evaluation, 31(3): 372-384. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvac015
This research explains the emergence and variation in policy engagement bodies set up with UK universities to support a changed relationship between research and policymaking. We find that while some work internally to influence policy engagement research capacity, others seek to foster external networks to gather intelligence on demand for evidence, or focus on deeper relationships and influencing agenda setting.
To accompany the paper, we published an LSE Impact blog - Surveying the landscape of UK University policy engagement – What are we doing differently and why? - which summarises the research and, in light of funders increased investment in university policy engagement, emphasizes the need to better understand the impact these bodies have on policy.