My brother is an arboriculturist. His work involves swinging from ropes at height in the Pembrokeshire breeze with heavy, loud equipment, lopping or logging majestic or ailing trees as needed. In many ways our work couldn’t be more different. As I come to the end of my seven years as Head of PPS, and a decade working in the research-to-policy interface, I keep coming back to a question he asked me over a beer one evening.
“When’s the best time to plant a tree?”
Not blessed with green fingers, I thought for a moment and mumbled, “In the morning?”
“Nah - 30 years ago. When’s the next best time?”
Clearly, I looked perplexed.
So he leapt in: “Tomorrow!”
The University of Southampton initially invested in Public Policy Southampton (PPS) in 2012, in advance of REF2014. Originally the brainchild of Professor of Public Policy Gerry Stoker OBE, it was then championed by Prof Jane Falkingham CBE - first in the Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences (remember that?) and then centrally in Research and Innovation Services (RIS). As part of RIS, PPS became truly pan-institutional thanks to the investment, time, and guidance of Dr Lorna Colquhoun and Prof Mark Spearing. Thanks to all of these key institutional actors, the University of Southampton doesn’t need to plant a tree tomorrow, because it had the forethought to plant a sapling 14 years ago.
As we become more familiar with the new UKRI funding landscape, outlined by Lord Vallance’s Three Buckets Model, it seems all the clearer to me that those research-intensive institutions that have invested patiently in developing mature public policy knowledge-exchange functions, such as PPS, will be best placed to secure Bucket 2 “National and Societal Challenges” research funding. Now is not the time to draw back funding or dilute the mission of public-policy knowledge exchange, but rather to press home the first-mover advantage we have as an institution.
Without the interlocutors, researchers will have neither the confidence nor the capability to interpret or shape what the policy community means by “national or societal challenges”. Without the translators, the policy community will not hear the relevance of the research outputs generated. Without a mature, tested and trusted institutional policy-engagement ecosystem, funders will find it hard to have the confidence to award. At Southampton we have Stoker, Falkingham, Colquhoun and Spearing to thank that our institution is well placed to take advantage of the changes underway. Others are not so lucky. But that’s for the future. Looking back, what have I learnt?
Michie’s framework has been incredibly helpful. Michie posits that for behaviour change to happen, individuals need Capability, Opportunity and Motivation. This set of principles has helped me ensure that PPS’s activities are directed towards one or more of these factors, helping researchers to prioritise this work amongst their other commitments. The growth of our training offer, our erstwhile secondment programme, and the credible, empathic and responsive guidance from Specialist Policy Officers (SPOs) has boosted researcher Capability across the career stages from PhD to Professor. SPOs’ tending to networks of civil servants and politicians, filtering vast quantities of formal and informal signals from government about its evidence needs, not to mention the sheer number of Select Committee Inquiries we have discussed as a team have ensured that researchers have been well served with Opportunities to engage. The inclusion of policy engagement in the academic-appraisal process, the infectious curiosity of SPOs in researchers’ work, the easy way they have mapped research to government priorities, plus the good-natured professional competition engendered by our podcasts and videos featuring researchers who have enhanced their research and teaching by engaging with policymaking — all have contributed to Motivating researchers to prioritise this work.
Looking back, I had no idea quite how much time all of this would take. The half-decade of engagement with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is one example that springs to mind. Another would be the layered work that led to a number of University of Southampton researchers contributing to the recently published National Cancer Strategy. The timescale for these impacts to be realised speaks to the need to consistent and patient investment. During my tenure, junior researchers I first started working with are now professors. The professors I started working with have “gone Emeritus”. PhD students have gone on to be Senior Civil Servants, lecturers, Policy Advisors at Royal Colleges, some have roles in government too secret to speak of, and others have come to work in PPS. And that’s to say nothing of the Prime Ministers…
And what will I miss? (Well, it won’t be the weekly Consultations and Inquiries slog — sorry Wassim/Fatima/Tiff!) It will be the people. The capacity of colleagues to get alongside a researcher, to be excited by their work, and to find a way of helping them move along their policy-engagement journey has been joyous. The cohorts of Associates who have been boosted by their time with us feel like a truly meaningful difference made. The growth in confidence and capability of Digital Communications Officer interns and Ignite secondees has been a very pleasing thing to see year in, year out. There is an empathy and a creativity within PPS that I haven’t experienced professionally before.
And while my new role as Head of Partnerships in the University’s Public Affairs team means I won’t be going too far, but I will very much miss working on a daily basis with Yaryna. She is instrumental in the best bits of what makes the team today, and I’m very pleased to say that she will be stepping up as Interim Head of PPS. Which leaves me only to wish her the best of luck, to thank you all for working with me and PPS over the years, and to echo a certain T. Blair: I was the future once…