£6m project will drive academic evidence in public policymaking

Research England has provided £5m, with additional funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and UKRI.  

The investment will support the development and scaling of UPEN, a UK-wide network of organisations, which champions academic policy engagement to strengthen evidence-informed policymaking in the UK.  

UPEN connects UK policymakers with researchers from over 110 university members, as well as providing support, best practice and collaborative opportunities for policy engagement. Over the next four years, UPEN will undertake new programmes of work including; 

• Improving UK universities’ ability to engage with policy organisations and policymakers 

• Supporting place-based policymaking by strengthening engagement between universities, regional, and local policy organisations 

• Embedding citizen engagement and community-driven approaches to policymaking 

• Creating more sustainable and resilient engagement models  

The funding will support UPEN’s evolution from a voluntary network into a sustainable organisation, shoring up the future of academic-policy engagement in the UK.  

On the award, Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Executive Chair of Research England, said: “The need for reliable evidence which can inform public debate and policy has never been greater. With increasing pressure on public finances, it is also vital that local and central governments can be confident that their policy interventions will be effective and successful – and academic expertise has a crucial role to play in that process.”  

Professor Geraint Rees, UCL’s Vice-Provost Research, Innovation & Global Engagement, said: “University research offers a wealth of insight to inform complex policy questions, and recent years have seen increased policy demand for academic expertise. Effective engagement requires universities to work collectively in order to respond to policy needs. Universities and policymakers need to engage with each other as effectively as possible to improve outcomes for citizens, so we’re delighted that this funding from Research England will put this engagement on a firmer footing.” 

With the investment UCL will work collaboratively with partners the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Durham, Huddersfield, Leeds, Nottingham Trent, Southampton, Teesside, and the Wales Centre for Public Policy at Cardiff University, along with Insights North East.  

UPEN will also work with the Institute for Community Studies, the Institute for Government, and Yorkshire Universities. 

The ESRC have provided their support with £300,000 to support participation of universities across the UK in UPEN Programmes. A further £582,000 has been awarded through UKRI’s strategic theme, ‘Creating Opportunities, Improving Outcomes’ to develop work on regional evidence needs.  

This strategic investment from Research England follows their £4 million award in 2020 for Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE), a four-year multi-partner project also led by UCL in partnership with the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester, Northumbria and Nottingham. This project highlighted the value of collaboration between universities for more effective engagement and led to new ways for researchers to understand evidence needs in policy, across the UK Parliament, Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and regional authorities. 

About UPEN  

UPEN is a UK-wide network of organisations who support evidence use in public policymaking. It provides an interface between universities and local, regional, and national policy organisations. It is hosted by UCL within UCL Public Policy, and co-chaired by Sarah Chaytor, Director of Policy and Strategy at UCL, Professor Andrew Brown, Professor of Economics and Political Economy at the University of Leeds, and Dr Chris Hewson, Head of Policy Engagement at the University of Huddersfield. 

Links 

• UPEN

Media contact

• For all UPEN enquiries please contact hello@upen.ac.uk