Why collaboration is critical in academic-policy engagement

11th December 2024 Blog

⌚ Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

This is the second in a series of essays reflecting on key insights which have emerged from CAPE over the past 4 years. The essay draws on discussions amongst the CAPE team at a writing workshop held in June 2024, and on reflections from CAPE’s Advisory Board. I am very grateful to all colleagues who provided input.

As a partnership between five universities and three policy partners with the aim of strengthening engagement between academic research and public policymaking, CAPE has always had collaboration at its core. Our vision has been to embed collaboration across our partnership and in all of our interactions with policy actors. In this essay, we reflect on the value of collaboration in academic-policy engagement and the approaches we have taken to implement collaborative approaches throughout CAPE’s delivery.

Collaboration as an enabler

As we were developing CAPE, we heard repeatedly from policymakers that they wanted a simple way to work with multiple universities, rather than maintaining many bilateral relationships with individual institutions. Our intent as a consortium of five universities was therefore to provide a streamlined way to build engagement between policy organisations and academic researchers across our institutions, providing a single ‘funnel’ to multiple sources of academic expertise. In other words, we were attempting to build a multilateral approach to academic-policy engagement.

At the beginning of CAPE, this approach frequently felt like we were working against the dominant vein of academic-policy engagement, which was often driven by a desire for institutional advantage – reputational, financial, or otherwise – from engaging with policymakers. It wasn’t necessarily the first instinct of either individual university staff or institutions to work in a collaborative way, sharing contacts, access, resources, and project ideas. It was also difficult to work in this way in a context of patchy engagement based around individuals and often-transactional individual projects. A lack of structures or systems to provide connections and sustain relationships between and across individual interactions made collaborative approaches challenging.

“Our focus on collaboration proved a powerful enabler of engagement. It also served to help our project, and our institutions, to become more than the sum of our parts.”

Our focus on collaboration proved a powerful enabler of engagement. It also served to help our project, and our institutions, to become more than the sum of our parts. We were able to form connections across different activities and relationships, and deliver deeper engagements at a greater scale working collectively than we would have done as individual institutions. Working collaboratively also made it easier to sustain relationships beyond and between individual interactions. This was partly a very practical matter of being able to ‘pass’ the baton according to capacity. More importantly, it reflected a shift from individually owned and bilateral relationships to collective, multilateral relationships held by CAPE, which operated as an umbrella over individual relationships.

Collaboration also helped to balance institutional and consortium priorities. This ensured, for example, that we could each build strategic relationships with particular partners benefiting our own institutions (for example specific local authorities) and leverage particular areas of strength and expertise. At the same time, we were able to maintain our collective commitment as CAPE to be topic-agnostic and demand-responsive. To some extent, we ‘felt our way’ to understand where there has been the greatest potential to develop and deliver collaborative activities and how far we have been able to meet in the middle of different strategic priorities and drivers.

Below we consider the ways in which we sought to embed collaboration throughout our project delivery.

Collaboration through co-design

Embedding collaborative approaches with policy partners from the outset has meant that every activity delivered through CAPE was co-created. This has been crucial for jointly scoping specific needs and exploring potential responses to determine the most appropriate approach. It has also enabled us to provide agile capacity and responsiveness to changing policy requirements, including the ability to flex and switch tack as and when needed.

For example, we co-developed a project with the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology and the International Public Policy Observatory to explore delivering rapid evidence assessments on specific topics of interest to Parliament. This embedded a CAPE Policy Fellow to work between POST, Select Committees, and the CAPE and IPPO teams. The project was jointly scoped and co-delivered, undergoing considerable changes as our collective understanding changed we surfaced unanticipated challenges. This included how topics should be sourced and from who; from the specific topics to be addressed; to how rapid reviews should be delivered. Taking a collaborative and flexible approach to delivering the project resulted in both a set of topical evidence reviews and a practical resource on commissioning rapid evidence assessments which drew on learning from delivering the project.

Adopting a collaborative (and practice-based) approach to developing CAPE’s ‘how-to’ outputs has also enabled us to reflect the different experiences and perspectives of many of our policy partners, delivering more well-rounded and robust resources. For example, our project scoping toolkit was developed in close collaboration with key CAPE policy partners to ensure it reflected their needs and the practical reality of working in government. It is now one of our most-downloaded/well-received resources.

Driving collaboration through CAPE mechanisms

We have also tried to deploy CAPE mechanisms in multiple ways to support collaborative approaches to academic-policy engagement. For example, CAPE Policy Fellowships for researchers were scoped collaboratively with policy hosts, with joint adverts then offered across partner institutions. Fellowships for policy professionals were hosted collaboratively across the CAPE partnership, enabling fellows to spend time in multiple academic settings. CAPE knowledge exchange events convened actors from beyond our own institutions to enable collaborative dialogues which explored shared challenges and areas of interest. In some cases, these helped to scope further collaborative projects, such as a collaboration with Islington Council and Sheffield Hallam around ‘good work’, community unionism, and work-based harms. The CAPE Collaboration Fund provided funding to support academics to develop collaborations with policy actors. Applications and awarding recommendations were managed collectively, with individual institutions then determining the number of ‘successful’ awards to fund at their institution. The projects have both strengthened relationships whilst delivering meaningful outcomes to address policy problems.

Building collaborative project delivery

Working as a collaborative, multi-institutional team hasn’t always been straightforward. We had to navigate complexities, including different administrative processes and institutional contexts. At the same time, we had to build our understanding of how to operationalise collaboration, including aligning distinct processes and managing different institutional requirements. Early on, we co-developed a set of ‘collaborative ways of working principles’ which helps us to think through some of the operational implications. Working in this way has required sustained commitment and an agile and open-minded approach amongst our team. This has been enabled by us all collectively holding collaboration as a core value which has underpinned our ways of working.

“Working in this way has required sustained commitment and an agile and open-minded approach amongst our team.”

An early consideration was how to ensure our project delivery was a collaborative effort, rather than a collection of individually-led activities. The CAPE project team was structured with a dedicated coordinator post and institutional lead located at each university partner, and a central programme manager working across the project. This role worked across the delivery team to support collaborative working and project delivery. The coordination team met weekly to ensure a joined-up approach and ongoing dialogue across the team. We deployed shared documents and project tracker tools to ensure collective responsibility for project documentation and processes.

Learning-through-doing as a collaborative endeavour

Given the emerging and evolving roles working to connect academic research with public policymaking within universities, working as a collaborative team has been invaluable for providing peer support as we navigated specific complexities in our work and built shared resilience. This has been particularly important where team members were less experienced in academic-policy engagement or where there was less institutional capacity.

Our focus on learning-through-doing has meant we could explore how to address existing barriers and develop new processes together, benefiting from the different approaches across our partnership. For example, each CAPE partner institution had a different approach to managing our seed funding scheme and integrating it with existing internal funding management processes; and required their own institutional contracts to be used for policy fellowships. This has delivered valuable learning about how different mechanisms can be deployed in specific contexts. However, such process differences can also undermine agility as individual institutional systems have to be worked through (or around).

The benefits of collaboration

We highlight in particular 3 key benefits of embedding a collaborative approach throughout CAPE:

Strengthening relationships with policymakers: Collaboration has been crucial in building relationships with multiple policymakers, mitigating concerns about ‘favouring’ individual institutions. One of our longstanding policy partners remarked early on that they wouldn’t have been able to work with the same intensity had we been operating as individual institutions – it was the collective approach which both motivated and enabled them to commit to our partnership. This approach helped CAPE to be seen as a collective entity and trusted partner – for example, to policy officials who felt they could easily ‘pick up the phone’ to ask for advice or explore an idea. Our collaborative approach enabled us to form strategic and sustainable relationships, which could then underpin a wide variety of engagements and activities, rather than one-off or ‘transactional’ interactions.

Supporting a demand-led approach: We have also had an enhanced ability to respond to policy need, which helped us to deliver on our demand-led approach. Working collaboratively across our five university partners meant that had a wider breadth of academic expertise and interests to draw on than if we were operating as single institutions, as well as tapping into wider academic and other networks (some overlapping, some not). This ensured that we had a robust and credible offer of access to research expertise and knowledge mobilisation capacity and the ability to deliver a significant volume of activity. We saw the benefits of this with our ‘incoming’ policy fellows, where the significant appeal of the CAPE fellowship scheme was that it operated across 5 universities, enabling us to broker interactions between 40 policy fellows and almost 400 academic researchers.

Increasing capacity: On a practical level, embedding collaboration helped us to share the workload more effectively, ensuring that variations in capacity were managed smoothly. For some projects, the ‘lead’ institution changed as initial conversations developed to delivery, according to expertise and capacity; for others, we delivered activities as a team from start to finish.

Our emphasis on collaboration has enabled CAPE to function as a consortium with clear strategic goals aimed at strengthening academic-policy engagement for the wider ecosystem, rather than representing individual university interests. This has in turn helped to create a stronger ‘license to operate’ than we might have had as individual institutions, because we are recognised as building collective capabilities and collective success.

Enablers of collaborative working in academic-policy engagement

Building trust and shared agendas: a relational approach is key to this and can also ensure an open-minded approach to determining outcomes
Long-term commitment to collaboration: this ensures sufficient incentives, flexibility and ‘breathing room’ to work out the kinks of collaboration
Pursuing collaboration according to means: effective collaboration requires all actors to have some capacity for it, but it is also important to recognise differences in individual and institutional capacity at different points
Processes and frameworks matter to enable concrete collaboration: CAPE’s Theory of Change and ways of working documents provided a useful framework to guide our project team on delivery, prioritisation and desired outcomes
Timing is everything: Stage of policy cycle; strengthen of policy appetite: understanding actors, needs, appetite

How can we strengthen collaboration across the academic-policy ecosystem?

To support and strengthen collaborative approaches to academic-policy engagement in the future, we propose four areas for consideration:

Sustainable and collaborative relationships with policy partners

Developing and sustaining long-term relationships with policy partners builds the foundations for specific projects and activities. This means moving away from an approach focused around individual relationships to supporting organisational relationships, at a range of different levels (from team to institutional). CAPE’s legacy work will include ‘handing over’ key relationships with policy actors to sustainable cross-sector networks such as UPEN, to sustain these relationships for collective benefit and ongoing collaboration.

Building capacity for collaboration

We have noted elsewhere the importance of dedicated relational and operational capacity to support academic-policy engagement and to mobilise knowledge. Such capacity is essential to support and maintain long-term collaborative relationships. Sustainable academic-policy ‘connective infrastructure’ can complement specific project funding; sustain collaborations beyond funding periods and time-limited projects; and support more inclusive approaches to academic-policy engagement which can broaden participation, particularly from under-represented communities.

Multilateral approaches to academic-policy engagement

Many effective bilateral interactions already exist between individual people or evidence initiatives and policymakers. We now need to create more opportunities for multilateral engagement, which spans multiple individuals and multiple institutions, to enable more effective and efficient working with policy actors. A more collective approach will require careful consideration of different interests to develop a collective approach and define a ‘shared offer’ to national and sub-national governments.

Stronger coordination and collective convening across the academic-policy ecosystem

The rapid and ongoing evolution of the academic-policy ecosystem is seeing many new initiatives to connect academic research to public policy emerge. As these welcome developments continue, it will be important that as a sector we more proactively pursue opportunities to work together and align shared interests. This will require us to commit to research-policy engagement as a public good, above individual and institutional competition.

A collaborative future?

We hope that CAPE has served to illustrate the importance and value of working collaborative to build connections between academic research and public policymaking, and of embedding collaboration between academic researchers and policy professionals. Since CAPE was launched, we have seen an increase in collaborative cross-sector and cross-institutional projects to connect academic research to public policy. There is certainly still a long way to go – but we will get there sooner if we are all pulling together in the same direction.

Sarah Chayor