Toolkits, cheat sheets and ministerial briefings – the University of Essex approach

Tell us about you – who are you, where do you work, and what’s your role?

I am Alex Beaumont, Research Impact Officer for Business and Law at the University of Essex. I am the UPEN lead here, but I sit within the wider Research Impact Team, which is part of our Research and Enterprise Office. We are made up of several Research Impact Officers and a Research Impact Manager.

Our goal as a team is to work with departments across the institution to help academics identify the impact that their research can have on wider society, and how they go about engaging with the right partners and audiences to achieve that. We work on creating a positive engagement and impact culture within the University, both from a REF perspective, and more broadly.

Tell us about your personal career pathway. What led you to a role focused on connecting research and policy at your institution?

I joined the University of Essex without any prior impact or policy experience, bringing with me transferable skills from previous roles. While our role is focused on impact, rather than academic-policy engagement specifically, each of us within the team have our own specialisms and extra responsibilities, and as policy engagement is a key route to impact, I was particularly interested in enhancing my knowledge in this area. I attended as many training events and opportunities as I could (particularly from UPEN), eventually leading to me becoming the policy engagement lead in our team.

How did your institution first come to be a member of UPEN? What were the original goals for joining the network?

The University of Essex has been a member of UPEN since 2018. As we do not have a dedicated Policy Unit, institutional support for policy engagement has and remains the responsibility of the Research Impact Team. The original goals for joining the network were to improve the team’s own understanding of policy engagement pathways to enable us to fully support those academics who engage with policymakers. Over time, as our knowledge has progressed and remains up-to-date with UPEN training and networking opportunities, we have been able to develop resources – such as our Research Impact Toolkit, various training sessions as part of our Impact Academy, policy ‘cheat sheets’ and a policy@essex newsletter – which enable us to disseminate this knowledge, and the various academic-policy opportunities available, to the wider University.

What is your institution’s overall approach to academic-policy engagement? Could you describe some of the key activities or programmes you focus on?

Our overall approach to academic-policy engagement is to provide a supportive environment whether academics are new to policy engagement or have well established contacts. Our work in Research Impact gives the team a very strong understanding of the wide variety of academics enabling us to identify specific policy opportunities that may be suitable for the academics we work with and share those accordingly, both on an individual basis and via a fortnightly newsletter.

The newsletter has developed as our support has, to cover local, national and international opportunities for policy engagement. Once a suitable opportunity has been identified we aid academics in responding whether that be reviewing their draft submissions to inquiries and consultations and offering advice on policy briefs. We also offer training on academic-policy engagement as part of our wider Impact Academy, and work with academics to help them identify and plan suitable routes to academic-policy engagement for what they are looking to achieve.

Tell us about a specific policy engagement project or achievement from your institution that you are particularly proud of. What was the challenge, what did your team do, and what was the outcome?

One of our academics was recently invited to give a briefing to a Minister. To assist them in their preparation for this, we produced a summary of the policy context relating to the specific topic and some background on the Minister in question, including where they’d raised questions in Parliament on that particular topic. This enabled the academic to tailor their meeting and written presentation to feed directly into the Minister’s priorities, and is leading to policy changes in that area.

From your institution’s perspective, what is the biggest value of being part of the UPEN network today?

Being part of UPEN is invaluable in so many ways. For starters, it allows institutions access to policy opportunities that are not advertised in any other way.

Secondly, the training events are so informative and keep us up to date with what is happening in the academic-policy engagement world.

Finally, it helps to meet other professionals working in the same area and to share knowledge and experiences. I was part of the UPEN mentoring programme, and this really helped to cement my knowledge, and to meet colleagues working in similar roles across other institutions.

Finally, what one piece of advice would you give to other members on how to make the most of their UPEN membership?

Make the most of the opportunities that crop up as part of being a member of UPEN – join the mentoring if it runs again; go to the annual conferences; and attend the training available. It all helps to increase awareness, to meet like-minded people and to hear how others are tackling similar challenges.