The Areas of Research Interest (ARI) Sub-Committee serves as a bridge between national, local and regional ARI and the academic community, enhancing comprehension of research priorities.
What are Areas of Research Interest?
Responding to the 2014 Nurse Review of Research Councils, ARIs were introduced as a way for government to have a more ‘sophisticated dialogue’ with UK Academia. They have since been introduced as a formal mechanism across all Government departments and, since 2021, across UK Parliament, the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), and upcoming, the Scottish Parliament.
ARIs are essentially statements of interest for policy making bodies to communicate their evidence needs. They can be research questions, themes, or general areas where they are looking for evidence to inform decision making at a national, local or regional level. They are not uniform across government departments, which means some ARIs can be 40 pages long with detailed overviews of the kinds of evidence they are looking for, and why; others can be a few pages long, with clear research themes they are inviting applicable evidence to respond to.
The ARI Sub-Committee has supported, alongside GO Science, various government departments to develop and disseminate their Areas of Research Interest to the academic community. Alongside this, the Sub-Committee and UPEN members have engaged with UK Parliament, the Senedd, Scottish Parliament and local and regional authorities to support the development and introduction of ARIs. We are named as a key outreach network in the UK Government guide for ‘Writing and using Areas of Research Interest’.
What we offer…
If you are a policy actor working on governmental or parliamentary ARI’s, we can support you to develop and disseminate these to the academic community. If you are an academic or professional services staff, we can support you to build capability within your academic and professional communities on how to respond to, use and build relationships around this policy engagement mechanism.
Showcase your ARIs to our membership
Partner with us to showcase your ARIs to an audience of 120+ UK Universities, including academics, knowledge brokers and policy professionals. We’ll do the heavy lifting – the logistics, ticketing, and hosting. All you need to do is present your ARIs, meet academics and knowledge brokers, and answer their questions. We’ll also collate and send you feedback after the event, and record it to host on this page as a key resource for academics to come back to.
Develop your ARIs
If you’re in the thinking, planning, writing or outreach stages of developing your ARI document, we can support you to engage with the academic and knowledge brokerage community to help you feel confident your research questions or areas are relevant, well communicated, and comprehensive to what UK research can offer. We can also work with you to develop an outreach plan for when the ARIs are disseminated, and offer you top tips on how to manage the responses you receive.
Support academic capability to engage with ARIs
We can support yours or your academic’s capabilities to respond to ARI’s through our regular UPEN events and masterclasses, and our dedicated resources. We can also provide advice and guidance on how you can upskill your academics, signpost to particular resources, or work with you to develop a plan of action. Get in touch with us to discuss this!
Key Resources
Below are some handpicked resources. See more by filtering by ‘Areas of Research Interest’ on our Resources page.
Developing Areas of Research Interest through CAPE
Since 2020 Policy Fellows from Capabilities in Academic-Policy Engagement (CAPE), a multi-partner project led by UCL, have been piloting ARIs in policy organisations where they were not used previously, from Parliament to combined authorities. Here, they talk about the the value of ARIs and the difference they have made in increasing the diversity of researchers that policy organisations engage with.
Areas of Research Interest: A Practical Guide
A guide aimed at policy organisations who would like to develop Areas of Research Interest as a way to identify evidence needs and to support engagement with researchers.
Enter the Dragon: Senedd Committees ARI Pilot Project
In September 2022, two Senedd committees launched the Senedd’s first Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) as a new way to improve committees’ engagement with the research community.
In this blog Rob Davies, CAPE Policy Fellow, outlines how researchers can engage with the ARIs and how they aim to support parliamentary scrutiny.
