Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN)’s Post

Transcript

Areas of research interest, or ARIs, are published documents by policy organisations covering evidence needs and topics that they're interested in engaging with researchers about. The UK Parliament is now using ARI for informing select committees. Areas of research interest are a tool that can be used by different bodies at different levels of government in the UK to help select committees in their academic outreach. They reach a broader range of people compared to traditional parliamentary engagement mechanisms. My fellowship was to develop and lead the committee Areas of Research Interest pilot project to help the research community to engage with parliamentary scrutiny. There were benefits all around or UK Parliament. It helped them to get a more diverse set of voices and the more diverse range of evidence was feeding into their work. Academics were underrepresented in the scrutiny process. 40% of respondents to the areas of research interest had never engaged with the UK Parliament before. The Women and Equalities Committee and Home Affairs Committee were very keen to work on an Area of Research Interest about violence against women and girls and it will inform several inquiries into different aspects of this issue. The pilot has also informed what became pilots in the Welsh Parliament and in the Scottish Parliament. Areas of research interest have changed the way that Senedd committees engage with the academic community. This has informed democratic debate in a very important way. Academics provide an incredibly important, independent, evidence driven perspective that they can't get from anywhere else. Because of the success of the CAPE fellowships, more and more people are seeing the benefits of ARI's, local authorities, for example, and regional bodies. The creation of a combined authority for the NE was a really opportune and exciting time for us in the CAPE programme to understand how can an ARI be jointly developed, jointly explored, jointly tested and jointly used. We were fortunate to work with North East Combined Authority. They are committed to having a really strong evidence base that serves their communities well. And I think the ARI have been a valuable way of broadening and enriching that evidence base. All of the benefits that we've seen in reaching the audiences is incredibly valuable. It's given committees and innovative new way to engage with a group of people that's really important to them as well.