To tackle this challenge, Charlotte Ryland and Marie Martine (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford) have written a guide on how to interact with the ARIs as a languages researcher. This guide includes advice on how to navigate the database, how to get in touch with the ARIs teams in individual governmental bodies, as well as examples of ARIs that might be relevant for languages researchers. While focusing on examples taken from current modern languages scholarship, it can also be of interest to Humanities researchers.
Raising the profile of languages research with civil servants
In parallel to the guide, the project aimed to increase the visibility of languages research among ARI teams across the government. The project leads shared individual reports with the Department for Education (DfE), the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), and the Home Office. These reports showed which topics of concern for the individual departments could be addressed by research in languages. They also included suggestions of changes to their currently published ARIs to make them more accessible to languages researchers, showing that simply adding the word ‘linguistic’ to some relevant ARIS can go a long way in facilitating researchers’ engagement.
In addition to these targeted reports, the team developed a general brief on how languages research can contribute to the ARIs, which we shared with the ARIs Officials Network at GO-Science. Access the brief for ARI Officials.
The project was funded by the Oxford Policy Engagement Network and The Queen’s College. Read more about languages research and policy engagement.
Related resources
Policy Fellowships Network will use shared learning to improve practice
Report: How and where is policy engagement recognised and rewarded in Higher Education?
Early Years Education and Care Research: Lessons Learned for Academic Policy Engagement
