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Applied Learning
About Applied Learning
The grand challenges of the 21st century require radically different thinking and ways of approaching the problems we all face.
Applied Learning programmes with the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) take our unique framework into practice approach and focuse on co-creating innovative solutions to the problems public sector leaders and innovation practitioners face every day in their work—how to think, learn, and work differently, to match the grand challenges of our times.
Our Applied Learning courses and programmes are designed through close collaboration between our faculty and practitioner teachers, together with public policy leaders undertaking the important work of change every day. Through this approach to co-creation, our programmes provide a balanced level of academic depth as well as practical insight and relevance. Designed specifically for senior leaders and government representatives, our Applied Learning courses are created to equip you with skills and insights to build innovative, inclusive and sustainable organisations and solutions that work.
Unlike traditional executive education courses, you will learn and work with an interdisciplinary group of academic staff and collaborators, iteratively applying the knowledge from our Applied Learning courses into your work as part of the learning course itself.
At the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, we work with a number of organisations to build tailored applied learning courses, incoporating our core IIPP DNA:
- Public value and public purpose
- Grand challenges and systems change
- Transformation by design
- Creative bureaucracies
- Digital transformation in government
- New economic thinking
We work with a small number of key governmental and other bodies per year to co-create customised programmes and short courses (coming soon), which you can find out more about below.
Explore our programmes
Applied Learning faculty and team
- Mariana Mazzucato
- Director and Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value
Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). Her current roles include being Chair of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All and a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors.
- Rainer Kattel
- Deputy Director and Professor of Innovation and Public Governance
Rainer Kattel is Deputy Director and Professor of Innovation and Public Governance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). Professor Kattel has also served on various public policy commissions, including the Estonian Research Council and European Science Foundation. He has worked as an expert for the OECD, UNDP and the European Commission.
- David Eaves
- Deputy Director for Strategy and Operations and Associate Professor in Digital Governance
Previously a lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School where he teaches and writes on digital era public administration, digital transformation and the governance of digital public infrastructure, David has also co-founded Teaching Public Service in a Digital Age, which has sought to bring together faculty from around the world to co-design and share an open licensed curriculum to teach the minimum needed digital competences for future public leaders.
- Kate Roll
- Associate Professor in Innovation, Development and Purpose and Head of Teaching
Dr Kate Roll is a political scientist interested in vulnerability, with a particular focus on the factors that enable people to gain greater social, political and economic security. Committed to grounded research, she has conducted in-depth field research in Timor-Leste, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Kenya. Dr Roll holds a DPhil in Politics (2015) and an MPhil in International Development Studies (2011; distinction) from the University of Oxford.
View Kate's profile - Bridget Gildea
- Bridget Gildea, Applied Learning Lead
Bridget works at the nexus between innovation, learning and capacity building, and public policy, and is a world leader in innovation in government learning programmes creation. With IIPP, she works with organisations to craft impactful learning opportunities, including co-creating our unique Theory-into-Practice co-creation methodology for applied learning programmes creation, integrating and embedding both IIPP research and the policy work led by Professor Mariana Mazzucato. She has previously led learning programmes creation for the University of Cambridge and at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
At Harvard Kennedy School, she founded policy executive education programmes, including the world’s first practitioner behavioural science programme and HKS's Digital Transformation in Government programme, together with UCL IIPP Professor David Eaves. She also built programmes with the MacArthur Foundation BI and corruption control in Nigeria; with the Robert Bosch Stiftung in Berlin for a programme at Harvard for Members of the German Bundestag, on Digital Transformation for the InterAmerican Development Bank, and a 5-year partnership with the National School of Government in Brazil. So far, she’s created over 120 applied learning programmes with governments, multilateral organisations and around the world.