From November 2023 to April 2025, the Wales Centre for Public Policy hosted and 18-month ESRC-funded Fellowship to explore whether, how and in what ways lived experience experts can best be involved in knowledge mobilisation for policy and practice.
Despite more established approaches to involvement of experts-by-experience in knowledge mobilisation in relation to health policy, practice of this kind is relatively emergent in other policy areas and there are divergent views and practices across knowledge brokering organisations. As such, this Fellowship sought to unearth practice insights which could strengthen understanding and practice in this area among the What Works Network and other knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs).
The key outputs of the Fellowship are:
- An analysis of interviews with What Works Centres and other evidence centres
- A desktop rapid review of evidence on current practice and approaches to involvement
- An Insight Note which distills key implications for practice among knowledge brokering organisations
Overall, our research found that an increasing number of KBOs are involving experts-by-experience in their work because of the value that they can add to the knowledge mobilisation process and, ultimately, because of the enhanced impact that this can result in. For some, the driver is more intrinsic and based on a desire to embed equality, diversity and inclusion in their practice and to take a more democratically engaged approach.
However, despite these potential benefits, it also presents what can be significant risks to experts-by-experience and KBOs. As such, this approach should only be undertaken when particular conditions are met. KBOs can take steps to foster those conditions if they wish to. In addition, the following practice principles should be considered by KBOs when working with experts-by-experience:
- Ensure ethical practice in terms of safeguarding, autonomy, experience, remuneration, support and consent;
- Ensure clarity and transparency about purpose, role and degree of participation;
- Ensure a reciprocal and trusting relationship is developed with experts-by-experience, through which they have a positive experience and gain
- Allocate sufficient resource and time and consider this approach from the very outset;
- Ensure there is a pathway to impact from the outset; and
- Consider equality, diversity and inclusion in terms of who is able to participate, why and how.
The Fellowship was a collaboration between the Fellow (Dr Rounaq Nayak), Dr Katie Crompton (Research Assistant), Dr Alex Jones (Research Assistant), WCPP, and three other What Works Centres – the Centre for Ageing Better, Youth Futures Foundation and the Centre for Homelessness Impact. Expert advice was 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.
