Meet the team: Nicky Buckley, Institutional Lead (Areas of Research Interest)

Hi Nicky. What’s your role within UPEN and what do you do?

I co-lead the UK-wide Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) programme and I’m leading a new national network, Evidence Exchange, which is funded by ESRC and has UPEN as a partner, which is building national infrastructure to support ‘Policy to Research’ learning and exchange opportunities for public and civil servants.

I’m also Director of Fellowships and Networks at the Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge. I manage the teams delivering Policy Fellowships for visiting policy officials as well as the support we provide to researchers in building their policy engagement plans.

What’s your favourite thing about your role?

The massive variety of topics I get to work across, doing mini deep dives into so many academic and policy areas, and the brilliant people I get to work with.

What has been your career highlight (or highlights) to date?

I loved spending 18 months doing a part-time secondment in the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, where I worked as part of the Knowledge Exchange Unit, supporting select committees experimenting with Areas of Research Interest. I was also able to co-author a journal article with Professor Kathryn Oliver during that time, on Evaluating Policy Fellowships. Prior to my current role, I had 10 enjoyable years running the Cambridge Science Festival and Festival of Ideas; and mixed in with that I spent 8 years as Chair of Trustees for the Cambridge Junction, a multi-arts venue in the city.

What do you think the biggest challenge in academic-policy engagement is at the moment and what can we do about it?

I think we should be making the most of linking digital systems for discovering ‘best fit’ between the knowledge needs of policy officials and research expertise with the human knowledge brokerage needed to curate the activities that bring policy officials and researchers together. We also need to focus on investing resources in knowledge mobilisation on the mechanisms which we know, from evidence, have proved useful.

What’s one small unexpected thing that always brightens your workday?

Staff based at the business school in Cambridge who go to the café get a free hot drink daily, and discovering that it includes hot chocolate too has helped me get through the greyer months.

What does your dream holiday look like?

The Isles of Scilly.

Time for Desert Island Discs! If you were cast away on a desert island, what three songs would you currently take with you and why?

I, and the most committed of the partygoers, recently got through an eight-hour playlist for my 50th birthday, some highlights include: Born this Way by Lady Gaga – uplifting and empowering; Caution (Clean Bandit remix) by The Killers – you can burn a hole on the dancefloor to this one; and Theme from S-Express by S-Express – which literally made me feel proud to be the host nation when played as the walk-on music as Liverpool-hosted Eurovision. You can tell I’d be trying to while away my time on a desert island by dancing.

Give us a plug for something you’re working on at the moment

I’m starting up the new Evidence Exchange network, which involves some great conversations with civil and public servants organising learning and exchange programmes, as well as with academics and knowledge mobilisers to scope out how this national infrastructure should develop.

How can we get in touch with you?

Email evex@csap.cam.ac.uk and find me on LinkedIn as Nicky Buckley.