University policy engagement bodies in the UK and the variable meanings of and approaches to impact

Hannah Durrant and Eleanor MacKillop

Research Evaluation, 2022, vol. 31, issue 3, 372-384

Abstract: Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of policy engagement bodies set up within universities worldwide. The present study focuses on the British experience of this phenomenon but with relevance to other contexts. Multiple factors are at play to explain this growth, from the Research Excellence Framework impact agenda (which assesses and ranks the quality of research in UK universities and has been echoed in other countries) to universities’ renewed focus on their civic mission, and a growing demand within policy and practice circles for more research evidence. Based on interviews with senior staff and analysis of their websites and documentary outputs, this article offers a comprehensive catalogue of university policy engagement bodies across the UK, and classifies them into types based on their activities, outputs, impact, and staff. We enrich this categorization by examining the stories these bodies tell to explain how and why they have emerged, and the variable approaches they adopt as they seek to influence both academic and policymaking practices. In doing so, we develop a typology of university policy engagement bodies, and demonstrate how they seek to partake in changing the roles and identities of universities, and their relationship with policymaking.

Keywords: evidence-based policy; higher education policy; policy engagement; research excellence framework; research impact; universities civic mission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/reseval/rvac015 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:rseval:v:31:y:2022:i:3:p:372-384.

Access Statistics for this article

Research Evaluation is currently edited by Julia Melkers, Emanuela Reale and Thed van Leeuwen

More articles in Research Evaluation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().