What does ‘impact’ mean in the context of UKRI Policy Fellowships?
By Alice Tofts, Policy Fellowship Coordinator
There has been a growing interest from the UK government and research funders over the last ten years in how the impact of university-based research on policy and practice in the public and private sectors can be increased. To encourage this activity, UKRI has provided funding to pay for academics to be seconded to UK and devolved Governments and What Works Centres as policy fellows for eighteen months to two years.
Across UCL there has been a shared momentum to bring together UCL’s academics who participated in the 2023 UKRI Policy Fellowship scheme as they near the end of their formal eighteen-month secondments. For the Fellows, this gathering offered a chance to celebrate, reflect, and share insights from their time embedded in government departments. For UCL Public Policy it was an opportunity to explore how institutional relationships with government can be deepened and sustained. UCL Innovation & Enterprise were keen to surface the impact and learning generated through secondment. And for the UKRI evaluation team — Professor Huw Morris and Dr Alice Tofts — it provided a valuable lens through which to examine the commonalities and variations in experience across a cohort of UCL academics working in diverse policy contexts.
The training series ‘Transform: Creating impact through knowledge exchange’, led by UCL Innovation & Enterprise, presented the perfect opportunity to bring together all the UCL teams and individuals invested in the scheme. The session was organised by Alice, with support from the UCL Research and Enterprise Team and the fellows themselves.
Four UCL fellows were joined by three civil servants for a panel discussion, followed by an interactive workshop. The session aimed to explore the challenges and solutions for enhancing collaboration between academia and public policy. As this blog explains, academics can add unique value in public policy settings, but the work they do is not like a traditional research project and requires building relationships and navigating complexity.
Fellowship impact is non-linear and multifaceted
Fellowships are often misinterpreted as a linear, cradle-to-grave research project that yield neat impact case studies. The fellows were keen to challenge these myths and assumptions, describing their work as work as a portfolio — a mix of rapid-response tasks, strategic advice, translation activities, and embedded collaboration.
For Andy Feist, Programme Director in Crime Analysis Unit at the Home Office, hosting a fellow highlighted the benefits of having an academic join his team with deep technical knowledge: ‘It can provide really strong insights that you’re not always in a position to gain when you’re a career civil servant or when you don’t focus on a particular type of research for any period of time.’
Indeed, fellows were valued for their responsive nature and finding gaps where they found value. One fellow, Dr Keri Wong, seconded to the Home Office, described this as ‘filling the vacuums’. The fellows said that they weren’t treated as interns, but were getting the real experience that any other civil servant would. Dr Chloe Park, seconded to the Department for Health and Social Care, added that ‘my experience was that I was treated like a civil servant from day one’.
This level of integration speaks to the credibility and utility of academic expertise when embedded in policy spaces. Fellows weren’t just observers — they were contributors, often relied upon for their depth of knowledge and analytical skills.
Policy engagement requires navigating complexity
It’s not just academic knowledge and skills that fellows require, but also flexibility and adaptability.
Keri highlighted that academics bring independent thinking and methodological rigour, their impact depends on alignment with policy needs:
‘Engaging with the Home Office’s data has allowed me to realise, yes, they have good data at the macro level, almost national level. But ultimately they also need the on-the-ground data, the lived experience, the co-produced solutions with our lived experience experts. As academics, we have that advantage to know that maybe government departments have the macro data set, but we need also that on-the-ground experience piece. And that’s where we add value. But you have to align a little bit better with the national interests as well.’
This speaks to the dual role of academics in policy in both offering critical distance and alternative perspectives but also providing contextualised, grounded knowledge that complements official data. To be effective in policy spaces, academics must learn to navigate ambiguity, compromise, and communicate strategically. It’s not just about presenting ‘the best evidence’ — it’s about framing it in ways that resonate with current priorities and constraints.
Relationships and accessibility are crucial
Collaboration, of course, relies on strong relationships. Informing policy isn’t just about the quality of research; it’s also about who you know and how well you’re connected. This was true for Dr Jack Blumenau who was seconded to the Cabinet Office: ‘I think I’d underappreciated the importance of personal networks in the impact pathway from academia into government. That’s something that I think has become much more apparent to me over the time that I’ve spent there’.
To bridge the gap between academia and policy, researchers need more than methodological expertise; they need political literacy, strategic empathy, and adaptive communication.
Institutional change is needed
It was clear that the fellowships supported fellows’ and hosts’ personal and professional development, but what about the wider and more sustainable impact for academia and public policy in terms of maintaining and sustaining knowledge exchange? One fellow reflected how they were concerned about how to bring back their learning to the university.
The conversation evolved to consider how best to incentivise academics to attend events such as Transform. Despite tremendous efforts from participants and organisers to promote the event, it was not as well attended as we would have hoped. This is not uncommon, despite the frequent calls for more engagement events and training. Ultimately, it comes back to capacity. Academics are often pulled in multiple directions, and policy engagement is still undervalued compared to teaching or publishing. It’s even less valued when activities don’t produce a neat, linear impact case study and require significant investment to nurture relationships.
Enhancing collaboration between academia and public policy requires a shift in institutional structures and support mechanisms. Rather than relying on rigid frameworks or linear models of impact, universities and funders must embrace flexible structures that accommodate diverse forms of contribution. Crucially, they must recognise the value of relational and embedded work, where trust-building, co-production, and systems navigation are as important as formal deliverables. Academics also need support to engage with the political complexity of policymaking, including the skills to navigate competing interests, shifting priorities, and real-world constraints. Finally, institutional incentives must evolve to reward messy, iterative forms of impact, acknowledging that influence often emerges through sustained engagement rather than a single output or neatly packaged case study.
Conclusion
The UKRI Policy Fellowships demonstrate that impact in public policy is not a linear outcome, but a dynamic, relational process shaped by context, collaboration, and complexity. Fellows contribute far more than traditional research outputs — they bring analytical depth, independent thinking, and grounded knowledge that enrich policy development. Their embedded roles reveal the importance of adaptability, strategic communication, and political literacy in navigating real-world constraints. To truly harness the value of these fellowships, institutions must move beyond rigid metrics and embrace models of impact that reward iterative learning, trust-building, and systems-level change. Only then can academia and government co-create solutions that are both rigorous and responsive to society’s most pressing challenges.
The official UKRI 2023 Policy Fellowships evaluation report will be published early 2026.
Participants
Dr Keri Wong, Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology, Co-Director of the Centre for Education and Criminal Justice, and ESRC Fellow with the UK Home Office.
Dr Jack Blumenau, Associate Professor of Political Science and Quantitative Research Methods, and ESRC Policy Fellow with the Cabinet Office.
Dr Laura Outhwaite, Principal Research Fellow (Associate Professor) at UCL’s Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, and Policy Fellow working with the Early Years team at the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).
Dr Chloe Park, Science Strategy Lead, Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Formally an ESRC Policy Fellow at DHSC when she was a Researcher and a Science Communications and Engagement Manager at the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL.
Levin Wheller, Evaluation Lead, Cabinet Office and Jack Blumenau’s policy host supervisor.
Scarlett Furlong, Principal Research Office, UK Home Office.
Andy Feist, Programme Director Policing Research, Home Office, and teaches cultural policy in the Department of Arts Policy and Management at City University in London.
