Evaluation of Centre for Urban Wellbeing Policy Fellowship Pilot Scheme: Supporting public policy makers and civic leaders to engage with researchers to enhance collective capacity to address wellbeing inequalitie

This briefing evaluates the CUWb Policy Fellowship scheme which was a pilot project conducted in 2021-2 with the aim of supporting public policy makers and civic leaders to engage with researchers to enhance collective capacity to address wellbeing inequalities.

This report explores the effectiveness of a pilot policy fellowship conducted by the Centre for Urban Wellbeing during 2021-22. The pilot scheme focussed on collaborative models of work with academics and policy makers in the research of wellbeing in urban spaces.

Research evidence on the usefulness of research-policy engagement is lacking, with descriptions and evaluations of such activity being poorly specified. It has been noted that there may be a mismatch between the aims of researchers and policy makers, and barriers exist in getting beyond the familiar or established aims of participants’ own organisational remits and cultures (Oliver et al 2022)

This report has three main purposes:
1. It provides a brief review of the existing literature on policy fellowship schemes
2. It aims to establish the perceived benefits and barriers to the effectiveness of the pilot scheme
3. It offers recommendations for higher education institutions who may be considering developing similar policy fellowship schemes.

In total, 12 policy fellows, who engaged with 12 academics from the University of Birmingham who participated in the pilot scheme. The fellows included policy makers at local authorities and civic leaders in the community and voluntary sector. Qualitative interviews were conducted with a small sample of three participants, and lasted around one hour each. These were transcribed and thematically coded to identify benefits, barriers and best practice recommendations.