WCPP ESRC Policy Fellowship – Involving experts-by-experience in knowledge mobilisation

Since November 2023, the ESRC has funded a Policy Fellow to be seconded to the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) to enhance the understanding, capabilities, and skills of knowledge brokering organisations in involving people with lived experience in our work. The Fellowship is an 18-month collaboration between the Fellow (Dr Rounaq Nayak), WCPP, and three other What Works Centres - the Centre for Ageing Better, Youth Futures Foundation and the Centre for Homelessness Impact. Expert advice is provided by Sarah Campbell, Head of Participation at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, with support from the Modern Slavery Policy Evidence Centre and the International Public Policy Observatory.

The Fellowship involves four key phases which feed each other iteratively:

1. Learning from within the WWN to explore current understanding and practices in relation to incorporating lived experience expertise and understand current practice, views and knowledge about lived experience participation across the WWN.
2. Learning from beyond the WWN by reviewing literature and, via 25 interviews, expertise in the broader sector to explore whether, how and in what ways, lived experience experts can inform the knowledge mobilisation process.
3. Experimentation and innovation within the WWN by drawing together learning from three action research opportunities to share and apply relevant methods for involving lived experience experts.
4. Sharing learning and increasing capabilities more broadly by producing case studies on action research projects, presenting to the What Works Council, through a half-day evidence quarter workshop, and producing a briefing for policymakers.

As well as sharing learning through research reports, the Fellowship will also compile and develop a toolkit of practical resources to support knowledge brokering organisations in our efforts to involve lived experience experts in our work to mobilise knowledge to inform policy and practice.