On 8th November 2023, Brunel Public Policy convened a panel of academics who had successfully engaged with public policy, to present and discuss how they managed to make those connections with public policy and ultimately become the person that policy makers come to for expert advice in the area of their expertise. The event attracted a large audience and a lively discussion followed the presentations.
Professor Subhash Pokhrel, Professor of Public Health Economics, spoke on how he built relationships with policy makers on Supporting tobacco control decision making for improved health and economic productivity. In this case, he worked with policy makers to design the research, ultimately making strong enough links between his research and policy approaches for a REF2021 case study.
Dr Allan Tucker, Reader in Computer Science, spoke on how he managed to raise his profile as the expert on AI in healthcare and especially how it needs to be regulated, and how this has resulted in his role advising the Medical and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on regulating the use of AI and being engaged to conduct research for regulatory bodies.
Dr Adrienne Barnett, Reader in Law, reflected on her time as a practicing barrister in family courts seeing elements of family law that needed to be changed or defended. Becoming an academic, gathering evidence and publishing in this area has now put her in a position to provide evidence and expertise for policy and law making in this area.
Some of the key points that arose in the talks and following discussion with the audience are summarised below.
- Engaging with a range of policy-related stakeholders raises your profile in your area of expertise, which can ultimately result in becoming the person that policy makers come to in your area. Types of stakeholders highlighted during this panel include government departments including specific civil servant contacts, local government, regulatory bodies, NGOs, lobbying and interest groups for your specific area, businesses with specific policy interests. Maintaining a strong social media profile can also help.
- Influencing or engaging with public policy is not always about pushing for a change. Sometimes it is important to put forward evidence and expertise that highlights the dangers of changes that other parties are proposing, in order to maintain a preferred status quo.
- Although we may present our research findings to policy makers in a different way to presenting to our academic contemporaries, it is important to have academic publications in the area we wish to engage with public policy. This is important both from the policy makers’ perspective of affirming that you are an expert in the area and for tracking impact of your research (e.g., for REF).
- Recalling their initial presentation to an audience of policy makers of some robust research that the presenter believed to have strong policy relevance, the policy makers advised that although they could see the research was excellent and within their area of interest, because it did not address the specific questions they needed to answer, they could not use it at all. Although initially disheartening, this was a turning point to begin working with policy makers to understand and address the specific questions that they needed to answer.
- Building strong links with policy stakeholders can lead to co-designed or co-produced research that more directly addresses policy relevant questions, and sometimes to being a hired in researcher on their projects (e.g. Regulators’ Pioneers Fund that regulators must apply for, and can then contract in university researchers).
- Once strong relationships are built, policy makers find value in expertise from academics that they do not have the capacity to acquire themselves, whilst university academics and researchers find value in applying their research to real world issues.
- Building strong links with policy makers needs to be nurtured, often over long periods of time, which can be challenging with staff turnover in the stakeholder organisations, but is worth it as a means to see your research findings used to make a difference in the world.
The event was not recorded and conducted under Chatham House Rules in order to promote candid discussion, accordingly the key points above are not attributed.
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