Policy Fellowships, where academics and policy professionals spend time in each other’s organisations to exchange knowledge, are becoming a far more visible and common method of supporting academic-policy engagement. From 2020-22 CAPE adapted the model pioneered by the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) to run a pilot collaborative Policy Fellowship programme, whereby policy professionals spent time in CAPE universities meeting academics and research services staff.
Based upon their experience, the CAPE guide ‘Hosting Policy Fellows: a guide for Higher Education Institutions’ shares knowledge, processes, and procedures of setting up and delivering a Policy Fellowship programme alongside indications of resourcing and timelines. It also provides templates that universities can use.
The aim of the resource is to support HEIs who wish to run, formalise, or get involved in existing Policy Fellowship programmes as part of their wider academic-policy engagement strategies.
About CAPE
Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE) is a knowledge exchange and research project funded by Research England from 2020-2024, which has been exploring how to support effective and sustained engagement between academics and policy professionals. The project is a partnership between UCL and the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester, Northumbria and Nottingham in collaboration with the Government Office for Science, the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, Nesta and the Transforming Evidence Hub.
About CAPE Resources
CAPE’s resources have been developed collaboratively with their policy partners and using practice-based experience. The toolkits and guides are designed to be flexible so they can be adapted to meet the specific needs of different university and policy systems. All resources are intended as an entry point into addressing common challenges in academic-policy engagement and to inspire new and deeper forms of engagement. The CAPE team encourage practice-based feedback on all CAPE resources, to improve their efficacy and to ensure that future resources cover the needs in academic-policy engagement. Get in touch here.
