Knowledge mobilisation for science for policy ecosystems: A case study from the Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE) project, UK

Kayleigh Renberg-Fawcett, UCL’s Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE) coordinator and a Vice-Chair of UPEN, reflects on some of the key insights from the CAPE project consortium (5 universities and 4 policy partners) as it approaches its third and final year. This blog is adapted from the CAPE blog: Collaboratively and at scale: lending CAPE’s experience to the challenge of describing knowledge mobilisation

What is knowledge mobilisation for science for policy, who does it and why is it important? These questions, whilst increasing in frequency, are fundamental to understanding what is required for a systems view of science for policy.

It is something that the European Commission has been actively exploring. Specifically, the growing interest in understanding what a sustainable ecosystem for science for policy should look like. This speaks to the need to join the dots between individual projects, learnings, systems, skills and knowledge that exists across the space. The JRC is an excellent example of this at a national and intra-national level, leading some of those discussions, which is articulated well in the recent Staff Working Document for building capacity for better use of scientific knowledge in policy making.

Similarly, in the UK, this is something that is being explored with the Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE) team – a research and knowledge exchange project which has recognised the importance of knowledge mobilisation roles as a core element of their budget. The Research England funded project seeks to draw out what works (and doesn’t) in academic policy engagement, the systems needed to support it, and how to create a more diverse and inclusive landscape – and knowledge mobilisation has been key to surfacing this.

This collective shift in perceptions on what exactly comprises a science for policy system is exciting. There is growing recognition that there is more to it than just the individual policy maker and the individual scientist cooperating effectively in a linear fashion. Rather, that there is in fact a swathe of people, systems, approaches and resources that make up the complex, relational academic policy engagement picture.

Below, we highlight some of our (CAPE) key findings from an England perspective on knowledge mobilisation for academic policy engagement, with the aims to spark conversation, share learning and increase mutual understand of knowledge mobilisation across Europe.

A bit on CAPE

The CAPE consortium is made up of five universities, three policy partners and an evaluation team (Transforming Evidence – who incidentally work closely with the JRC). In addition to the aims mentioned above, we test for these impacts through the delivery of four ‘mechanisms’ for academic policy engagement: policy fellowships, seed funding, knowledge exchange events and training.

At the offset, the team recognised the importance of knowledge mobilisation. Firstly, in that the team was comprised (budgeted) of knowledge mobilisers, which means our team is a mix of research and non-research staff who support on the policy impact of research at our own respective universities. Secondly, because we are all active members and are committed to the UK-wide organisation Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN), which, amongst many things, “acts as a champion for the emerging academic-policy broker role at universities” (UPEN Website).

What CAPE found

Two years on, the knowledge mobiliser colleagues at the five CAPE universities have begun to draw on their collective experience to more articulately define knowledge mobilisation for academic policy engagement. This draws on a blog produced by my wonderful colleagues at CAPE: Collaboratively and at scale: lending CAPE’s experience to the challenge of describing knowledge mobilisation. This blog goes into more detail providing insight into the ways knowledge mobilisation works at a systemic level and why this understanding is useful to a developing UK academic policy engagement sector. Please do read if this is of interest to you.

A note on context: we are sharing our findings here as knowledge mobilisers across five universities – the team of people who support on the policy impact of research. We recognise the role of knowledge mobilisers within policy – not necessarily those designing policy, but who work in the intermediary space to engage with research and evidence to support policy decisions. However the reflections below are based from the perspective of those within universities working specifically on the CAPE project.

The three key highlights that we wanted to share are:

1 Knowledge mobilisation can be operational

Operational here means we can support policy engagement through collaboratively establishing systems and structures for research policy engagement. As CAPE is a consortium of five universities, we explored our ability to work together to design processes for policy fellowships, seed funding, training and knowledge exchange. We have been able to borrow systems – like CSAP’s policy fellow scheme – but have also had to create new systems – like contracts to support researchers in undertaking knowledge exchange placements in policy organisations.

These processes take time to establish, and this became a large part of the CAPE team’s work in the first year of delivery. Establishing these systems enables each university to engage more equally with policy engagement opportunities, so speaks to the need of equitability systems for academic policy engagement.

If we’re looking at sustainable ecosystems, then this means we need to recognise the skillsets needed for knowledge mobilisation which may sit beyond the traditional understandings of these roles: from project management, contract negotiation, systems design and evaluation, these are a few of growing list of skillsets that help make up a sustainable academic policy ecosystem.

Knowledge mobilisation can be systematised

Knowledge mobilisation is often characterised as supporting bilateral engagements – between a policy partner and a research community, undertaken by an individual.

However through CAPE, we found that CAPE as a representative consortium, provided that knowledge mobilisation infrastructure, which meant whilst we were working in our own institution (in my case, at UCL), we were in fact representing CAPE as a brokerage function.

Practically this meant, we were sharing our contacts and networks (rather than them being ‘owned’ by any particular institution), that our processes support brokerage (for instance, seed funding schemes required academics to identify a policy partner), and that CAPE’s own infrastructure, through its advisory board, project delivery group and university partners have a commitment to sharing academic expertise and insights on processes to operationalise the mechanism.

This commitment to systematic knowledge mobilisation is important to acknowledge, as we worked as a team, rather than as individuals. If these weren’t in place, then it would have been much harder to devise the processes, systems, learnings and collaborations that would contribute to an ecosystems approach, and may have been at risk at serving individual institutional needs.

The role of a knowledge mobiliser changes over a project’s time

This was an interesting finding. We hadn’t anticipated to such an extent how much our skillsets would need to change and adapt across the project timeline.

At the offset of CAPE, our focus was largely dedicated to process design, project management and addressing technical issues such as contracts. As we near the end of CAPE’s project timeline, we have moved into a more evaluative and analysis phase. In some cases, we need to operate across different project timelines; whilst we wrap up on one project, we may be in the process of initiating a new project. This may be of interest to future thinking on training for knowledge mobilisation and identifying specific skills needs.

A challenge

Recognition of the role or term, knowledge mobiliser, or knowledge broker as many policy organisations refer to it, is still lacking in the context of academic policy engagement. This is important to flag, because if we truly believe in the role of knowledge mobilisers, then there is a collective mission for us to explore how we better articulate what we do, so we can be recognised and valued, not only by our collaborators, but also by the organisations we work within. This, perhaps, is a topic for a different blog!

What next

We’ve learnt that knowledge mobilisers do more than support bilateral academic policy engagement. They contribute to the design, development and evaluation of processes for policy engagement, they represent something that is bigger than the individual, and that the skills needed to do deliver academic policy engagement will change over project timeframes.

We share the above as just one knowledge and research exchange project in the UK focused on academic policy engagement, amongst a growing and active ecosystem across Europe. We hope the above does not just give insight and prompt questions, but also invites challenge and further conversations of what it means to be a knowledge mobiliser in academic policy engagement in different contexts.

So in the context of Europe’s vibrant science for policy landscape, we welcome further exchanges, dialogues and insights across our local, regional and national policy environments. In particular, we need more international cooperation on the understanding of what knowledge mobilisation works well, where and why. This will be fundamental to enhancing capabilities, not only in our domestic contexts, but for understanding how knowledge can be mobilised to address the complex international challenges of our time.