Building connections: Impact and opportunities in the Department of Work and Pensions’ new ARIs 

Here at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), we’ve recently published our 2026 Areas of Research Interest (ARIs).  

Evidence is central to our work in the DWP. Our analytical community produces rigorous research, advanced data analysis and insights from lived experience and frontline operations. This helps us ensure high-quality, timely evidence is available to our ministers and officials, underpins decisions about how we can deliver our objectives, and contributes to improving outcomes for the people we serve.  

Many of DWP’s evidence needs are long-term and cross-cutting. They will not be answered by a single study, a single method, or even by a single department or discipline.

Our newly published ARIs reflect the opportunities and challenges facing DWP today. They cover a range of themes, including priority areas like labour market participation, disability and health and young people.  

Our ARIs are an invitation. If you have a shared interest in these research areas, we want to encourage you to consider how your work might contribute to furthering our collective understanding. The value of academic engagement and collaboration is always increasing, helping us work together across policy and academia to tackle complex policy challenges. 

That is one of the reasons I am so pleased that we will be working with UPEN on a launch event this October. UPEN has an important role in connecting policymakers with academic expertise across the UK, and the event will be a practical and fruitful opportunity to talk about the ARIs – and what they can help us achieve – in more depth.  

We’ve already seen how events like this can help build productive relationships beyond the policy space. Our ARI workshops have been a key platform for starting and furthering conversations and effective partnership working. Bringing analysts, policy officials and researchers together around a shared topic helps us understand what evidence already exists. It also helps us think beyond the immediate policy cycle and consider where longer-term research could make a difference.  

We want to encourage you to get in touch, whether it’s to start a conversation, tell us about an upcoming seminar or event, or introduce us to a wider network of expertise.

How do we see our new ARIs bringing value to you? For researchers, I hope the ARIs provide a clearer route to connect with DWP. If you are working on: 

• Employment 
• Work and health
• Disability
• Poverty
• Pensions
• Service delivery
• Labour markets
• Inequality

or related methodological questions, there is a good chance your work could be relevant to us.  

We want to encourage you to get in touch, whether it’s to start a conversation, tell us about an upcoming seminar or event, or introduce us to a wider network of expertise. We know that one simple, initial contact can lead to varied types of engagement with huge benefits for us in the DWP, and our external partners. 

For research funders and university policy engagement teams, I hope our ARIs are useful in shaping future activity. What comes after the publication of our ARI is where their true value will be realised. Many of DWP’s evidence needs are long-term and cross-cutting. They will not be answered by a single study, a single method, or even by a single department or discipline. They require sustained attention and strong relationships between government researchers, policymakers and the wider research community, supported by organisations like UPEN that help connect expertise with policy need.  

Sign up to attend our launch event on 6 October, 3 to 4pm. For engagement or queries, please contact us at evidence.strategyteam@dwp.gov.uk. We’d love to hear from you and connect you with the right people.