Policy Fellowships – placing university research and research services staff into policy organisations – is a fast-growing area of academic policy engagement activity. CAPE’s experience running Policy Fellowships demonstrated that establishing a process for Policy Fellows and finalising contracts can be time and resource intensive. This is because they have tended to require bespoke contracts that reflect the circumstances of each fellowship as well as the requirements of the university, host policy organisation and any third-party funder in relation to the fellowship.
This Contracts Guidance Note is designed to be used as a reference tool for university staff seeking to create fellowships. It includes:
- common contract negotiation points
- clarification of terminology
- a suggested process timeline.
About CAPE
Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE) is a knowledge exchange and research project funded by Research England from 2020-2024, which has been exploring how to support effective and sustained engagement between academics and policy professionals. The project is a partnership between UCL and the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester, Northumbria and Nottingham in collaboration with the Government Office for Science, the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, Nesta and the Transforming Evidence Hub.
About CAPE Resources
CAPE’s resources have been developed collaboratively with their policy partners and using practice-based experience. The toolkits and guides are designed to be flexible so they can be adapted to meet the specific needs of different university and policy systems. All resources are intended as an entry point into addressing common challenges in academic-policy engagement and to inspire new and deeper forms of engagement. The CAPE team encourage practice-based feedback on all CAPE resources, to improve their efficacy and to ensure that future resources cover the needs in academic-policy engagement. Get in touch here.
