How does campaigning and lobbying influence policy?

For this session we will be joined by James Tooze from the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), the UK’s leading independent advocate for science and engineering. Their mission is to ensure that the UK has the skills, funding and policies to enable science and engineering to thrive. CaSE represent over 115 scientific organisations including businesses, universities, professional bodies, and research charities as well as individual scientists and engineers.

James will offer insights into how campaigning and lobby groups can influence policy, and share his own experiences of working for an organisation like CaSE, from giving oral evidence to Parliamentary Select Committees to producing influential reports on important topics.

About the series

The world of policy making can be a ‘black box’ for many. Who are policy makers and how do they actually ‘make’ policy? How are experts selected for advisory committees? These questions, among others, can make engaging with policy seem like an impossible task to start.

The Policy Impact Unit is running a series of lunch and learn seminars over the year to give UCL Engineering researchers the opportunity to hear first-hand from policy professionals working in range of policy roles, including in Government, Parliament, Local Government, Expert Institutions and campaigning and lobbying.

During the seminars, attendees will to hear what it is like to work in a policy role, to learn more about how research evidence is used in policymaking and to hear how researchers can get involved.  The seminars will be a great opportunity for anyone who is interested in sharing their research with policymakers to learn more about how policy is made and how academics can feed in to the process.