Matthew Flinders and Jessica Benson-Egglenton
This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Understanding the dynamics of research–policy fellowships: an evaluative analysis of barriers and blockages’.
Supporting embedded academics requires understanding role types, managing ‘bandwidth,’ and setting clear expectations.
In recent years the dominant notion of ‘research excellence’ has expanded to include a joint emphasis on both knowledge creation and knowledge utilisation. Research funding is now targeted as addressing specific societal challenges. Forms of co-production and co-design have been promoted as a way of bringing potential research-users into project design and delivery. Thus, a vast and complex landscape of boundary-spanning initiatives and investments has been established to facilitate the use of research by policy-makers.
The challenge, however, is that policy-making is a messy and sometimes irrational process. Brian Hogwood and Lewis Gunn famously exposed this simple fact in their book Policy Analysis for the Realworld (1985), and recent work from the Institute for Government underlines the continuing validity of ‘the real-world messiness’ argument.
Policy-makers often criticise academics for having neat, linear theories of knowledge-transfer that are good ‘in theory’ but of limited value in practice. How Academia Can Work with Government is therefore a complex and multi-dimensional challenge. Several ‘barriers and blockages’ exist that underscore how research-to-policy engagement is at root a relational endeavour. Tacit rules must be understood, cultural expectations recognised, ‘decoding work’ undertaken. Most importantly, high-trust, low-cost relationships must be established and sustained.
Lessons from the ESRC Policy Fellows
ESRC Policy Fellowships was launched in 2021 as a pilot scheme to facilitate the mobility of academics into embedded positions in policy-making environments. By embedding academics directly in policy settings over an 18-month period, the scheme aimed to build relationships, utilise research, and develop mutual understanding. Although the initiative was broadly assessed as a success and was relaunched and expanded in 2023 as the UKRI Policy Fellowships, it provides a valuable case study for developing insight into the challenges at the nexus of policy and research.
Finding the bandwidth
As the existing literature on research-to-policy would have predicted, the ESRC policy fellows faced several hurdles in fulfilling their projects. But were there any new or unexpected ‘barriers or blockages’ that emerged? The simple answer is ‘yes’ – and this leads into a focus on competing pressures, managing complexity and the concept of ‘bandwidth’.
The idea of a policy fellowship gives the impression a simple shift from university-based researcher to policy-advisor. The situation is more complex as policy fellows must successfully navigate and manage twin professional tracks. They must retain and protect their academic reputation and fulfil administrative and teaching roles back in their university, while at the same time developing a new policy-focused persona.
Competing pressures emerge from cultural tensions, misaligned timescales, and personnel and policy churn. They also stem from practical issues like maintaining different emails, working on different computers, and gaining security clearances. That fellows need to produce publications out of the fellowship was very often a source of tension. Official rules concerning confidentiality and data access, and a generally risk-averse bureaucratic culture, limited publication potential.
Put simply, working across professional boundaries generated significant professional and cognitive demands. The ‘bandwidth’ of participants to cope with the breadth of demands was sometimes pushed near the breaking point, highlighting the emotional labour often involved in boundary-spanning.
Different types of policy fellows
If undertaking embedded policy fellowships in, for example, the Cabinet Office or the Scottish Government is so demanding, how did fellows learn to cope?
Fellows engaged in a form of sensemaking whereby they shaped their fellowship to suit their needs and interests. We found different ‘types’ of policy fellows, each bringing challenges and opportunities. Some fellows moved into more tight and specific analyst roles. This had the benefit of being least stretching in terms of bandwidth, but the disadvantage of being slightly disconnected from actual policy discussion and design. Many took on a research project leader role, which had the benefit of familiarity but often encountered publication problems. Other fellows adopted a far more fluid and network-based role as wide-ranging ‘connecting rods’. This gave insight across a vast bureaucratic terrain, but also sometimes created tensions by not aligning with established protocols.
Boosters and enablers
The key learning emerging out of the evaluative data, however, relates not to ‘barriers and blockages’ but to the ‘boosters and enablers’ through which the individual, organisational and systemic value of the research-to-policy investment could be maximised.
Simple ways to boost the capacity and contribution of fellows include:
- reducing publication problems through clarity in partnership agreements
- reducing the destabilising effects of high levels of staff turnover by giving fellows more than one link person
- generating greater connective capacity between research-to-policy and policy-to-research initiatives
- introducing new forms of strategic peer-to-peer support.
But greater clarity around expectations proved to be a simple ‘booster or enabler’ which could help address multiple ‘barriers and blockages’.. Sometimes policy fellows turned-up at their host organisations to be met by a degree of confusion about what their specific role was, who would supervise them, and how they would be integrated meaningfully within the organisation.
The policy fellows have a development network to help build collective intelligence across the cohort. A key insight from this research is that more support for policy hosts – through training, case studies, and guidance – might also be required to ensure greater clarity and understanding about how best to utilise fellowships.
Image credit: Photo by Khashayar Kouchpeydeh on Unsplash
Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre at the University of Sheffield. He is also Vice-President of the Political Studies Association and Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network.
Jessica Benson-Egglenton is a Research Fellow in the Sheffield Institute of Education, with over a decade’s experience in educational research and evaluation.
Read the original research in Evidence & Policy:
Flinders, M. & Benson-Egglenton, J. (2025). Understanding the dynamics of research–policy fellowships: an evaluative analysis of barriers and blockages. Evidence & Policy, DOI: 10.1332/17442648Y2025D000000063. OPEN ACCESS
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