Engaging with Politicians & Policymakers

Academics and politicians don't, traditionally, mix. The academics often see the politicians as Machiavellian mischief makers; politicians see academics as detached boffins. There's mutual distrust.

Last week's Grants Factory tried to remedy that. The Parliamentary Outreach Service (POS) showed that, not only were politicians not antagonistic to academics, but they actually valued and benefited from their research. Prof Jagjit Chadha (Economics) also spoke about the potential benefit for academics, in engaging with the parliamentary system, of understanding how decisions are made, and of playing a part in helping those decisions to be better informed.

He felt that it could be an immensely rewarding experience, both from just being part of the “process”, but also from having a real route to impact for your work. He did, however, warn of a couple of pitfalls that he had observed. Firstly, you need to beware of “capture” by politicians and policy makers, who will try to influence your input and research. Secondly, you may be exposed to potentially hostile media interest. This is outside the experience of most academics, and he advised that you get good media management support.

MPs are, by their very nature, generalists. They're paid to have shallow opinions on a broad range of issues. To deepen these opinions somewhat, they rely for their information on three sources:

Grants Factory: Engaging with Politicians & Policy Makers

As part of this year's Grants Factory programme, we will be holding a session on engaging with politicians and policy makers.

Academics are increasingly being urged to produce "impactful" research but how do you actually achieve that impact? One key route could be to engage with politicians and policy makers. Governments (of all political persuasions) need research results and advice from experts from a wide breadth of disciplines to help develop good, evidence-based, policies.

In this event, Kate Anderson, from the Parliamentary Outreach Service will discuss how Parliament uses academic research and the ways that you can engage with Parliament using your own work. Kate will be joined by Professor Jagjit Chadha from the School of Economics. Jagjit will share his extensive experience as an adviser to the Bank of England and the Treasury, to provide an insight into how this relationship works in reality.

The session is taking place this Thursday (19 March) between 12-2pm. It is free, open to all Kent staff, and lunch will be provided. However, do let Brian Lingley know if you are planning to come along so I can make sure the room and catering are sufficien

PVC's Lunchtime Seminars: 'Risk & Uncertainty'

The first PVC’s Lunchtime Seminar of 2010-11 will be taking place in two weeks time on Wednesday 3rd November, and will focus on 'Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty: a View from across the Sciences'.

This seminar will try to explain how quantitative subjects measure and account for uncertainty in decision making. We will look at examples from monetary policy making, environmental conservation and extinction probabilities, evaluating probability of low frequency high impact events in finance e.g. house price crashes, and how we can deal with increasing life expectancies. The speakers (Prof Jagjit Chadha (Economics) and Dr David Roberts (DICE), Prof Radu Tunaru (KBS) and Prof Paul Sweeting (SMSAS)) will provide short intuitive outlines of their work, followed by a discussion of the issues raised.

Lunch will be available from 12:30pm, and the Seminar itself will start at 1pm. All are welcome, and the event will take place in Woolf Seminar Room 5. I would appreciate it if you could let me know if you intend to come along so that I can book the food.