What is BPEA?

The Bath Policy Engagement Academy (BPEA) is a pilot project led by the IPR to develop the University’s policy engagement activities. It offers online guides and policy training and coaching for researchers to enable effective and impactful policy engagement.

Through it, we aim to improve skills and competencies in policy engagement among our research community, so that our research can play a greater role in policy design, development, and delivery now and into the future.

BPEA and the IPR are also helping to connect Bath academics with policymakers, through the IPR Policy Fellowship Programme, which brings senior policymakers to the University, and by signposting new opportunities for policy engagement.

Why is policy engagement important for researchers?

Generating impact, including policy impact, is an important element for a wide portfolio of academic research which has real-world application. Yet knowing where or how to start can often be difficult for researchers.

These guides offer an overview of how policymaking works in different contexts, as well as practical advice and guidance for researchers on different routes to engage policymakers with their work and research findings.

These guides include:

Information and guidance on policy engagement and the policymaking process:

• Policy engagement for researchers
• Parliament and policy engagement
• Government and policy engagement
• Devolved, regional and local government and policy engagement
• Think tanks and other policy actors

Routes to policy engagement:

• Stakeholder mapping
• Communicating research for policy
• Government consultations and evidence requests
• Areas of Research Interest (ARIs)
• What Works Centres
• Select Committees and APPGs
• Parliament's Libraries and POST
• Research to policy fellowships and placements
• Policy briefs
• Policy events and roundtables
• IPR Policy Fellowship Programme
• National policy networks (COMING SOON)

Planning, costing, and evaluating policy engagement:

• Writing policy impact statements (COMING SOON)
• Costing policy engagement (COMING SOON)
• Evidencing ‘policy impact’ (COMING SOON)

Learning from others and next steps:

• Reflections on policy engagement from Bath researchers (COMING SOON)
• Current ‘Research to policy engagement opportunities’

How can I get more help?

In addition to these online guides, the BPEA offers policy engagement cohort training for academics, including early career researchers.

To register your interest in future sessions, please email Amy Thompson (at712@bath.ac.uk).

We also offer policy impact coaching for select and significant research bids that have potential policy impact and where sufficient time to provide support is available. To find out if we can help, please email Amy Thompson (at712@bath.ac.uk).