Across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and in policy domains, there has been increased support for and investment in knowledge mobilisation activities and roles. At a time in which funding decision makers and awardees need to evidence the value of investments, questions arise: what is knowledge mobilisation, what does it do and why does it need investing in? Through our work in CAPE, we are seeking to contribute insight into the ways that academic policy engagement is enacted through knowledge mobilisation. We reflect on what our experience of knowledge mobilisation practice collaboratively and at scale tells us, and why a deeper appreciation of the way it works at systemic levels might be useful for the sector as it develops.

Many of us run knowledge exchange events to support academic policy engagement, but can we articulate easily why and how they are important? Following a CAPE Sharing Session, we reflect on what we learnt about what works when running knowledge exchange activities.

Elizabeth Lomas, CAPE Policy Fellow with DCMS, is working on the update to the department’s 2018 Areas of Research Interest document. She shares with CAPE how DCMS is developing these and her reflections on the process so far.

From September 2021 – April 2022 we ran three funding calls for our CAPE Collaboration Fund and awarded £400,000 for co-production projects between academics and policy partners. While our projects are ongoing, we explore what we funded, what made for strong applications, and share our recommendations for writing an application for a collaborative project with policy professionals.

Sarah Chaytor reflects on the implications of open access research for increasing evidence-informed policy making and how we can ensure that policy communities can benefit from the increasing volume of research available.

CAPE commences new fellowship with University of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire County Council supporting the development of a ‘Health in all Policies’ approach at the Council.

Parliament have updated their guidance for giving written or oral evidence to a House of Commons select committee. Find out more about what this includes.

With increasing scholarly investigation of academic-policy engagement in recent years, we explore what common insights are emerging from this literature and what this tells us about how to have successful engagement in practice.

Gigi Tennant and Kuranda Morgan from CAPE partner Nesta, who lead our training workstream, share their reflections on what they’ve learnt about how to improve training and learning provision for academics who are engaging with policy.

Roshnee Patel, Deputy Director in the Policy and Strategy Group at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), has recently started a year-long CAPE fellowship at UCL to explore what framework she might develop to address complex social welfare legal need better across vulnerable groups. She explores why she’s taken a year out from the MoJ, the importance of taking time to reflect deeply on how she has approached policy and implementation in a central Government context, and what she’s been up to so far.