Jonathan Breckon introduces the University and Policy Engagement Network's new interactive map showing the organisations, bodies, networks and roles that make up the current ecosystem of UK academic policy engagement.
I have to confess, I'm a fan of maps. One of my favorite jobs was as head of policy for the Royal Geographical Society, which housed a million maps, charts, atlases, gazetteers, and globes. But there's no getting away from the fact that electronic versions are far superior. Dynamic, interactive, and often free, they are hard to beat in terms of their richness of information and ease of access. And you can pretty much map anything electronically these days, including our niche little world of public policy and academic research engagement. Although, after many months mapping organisations for University and Policy Engagement Network (UPEN), I found it was not so little at all. We identified nearly 300 different organisations across the UK. Everything from university policy centres, what works centres, colleges of experts, public sector research establishments, national academies, legislative bodies, and learned societies.
The aim was to help navigate the vast and increasing rudderless mass of activity that the last decades of investment in research-policy engagement has generated. We hope it will be useful for newcomers - a way to understand the policy-research landscape you have just entered. And for incumbents - a tool to locate new connections, and other evidence intermediary organisations. Knowing who else is out there might avoid wasteful duplication. And if you do have a novel idea, the map includes all the research funders for policy-relevant work.
We are building on the work of existing visualisations like the Government Office for Science GO-Science Kumu map of science advice committees and Arms-Length Bodies, the many great maps by Transforming Evidence, including one of the the UK science advice system created with the Foundation for Science and Technology, a map of the evidence use community internationally, and a review of 346 international research-engagement initiatives. And you can still see an old one I created 10 years ago that was called the ‘wobbly sausages’ at the Alliance for Useful Evidence. It feels like a clunky historic relic now. These maps have served different purposes in the development of our field - helping us understand what organisations are out there and the contributions they make, mapping evolving systems, a growing cross-sector research community, and helping clarify the mechanisms that lie behind efforts at engagement.
A key aim of this new map was to be inclusive of all the organisations - and all disciplines - in the UK policy and research world. This means looking beyond the usual suspects in Whitehall to include legislatures that are often missing, as well as local and regional government and organisations. It also included bodies outside of science, such as the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England. It's hard to think of a more consequential policy body, involving academics in decisions like interest rates that affect the entire economy.
Of course, undertaking such a comprehensive mapping exercise immediately opens the door to sins of omission. As soon as you start naming, your map is straight away open to accusations of leaving things out. But naming organisations also gives richness and meaning.
Some exclusions were entirely deliberate and pragmatic. For instance, the numerous government science advisory committees were left out because the Government Office for Science already provides an excellent, user-friendly map of these. A much bigger deliberate omission is the vast network of in-house central government researchers, scientists, analysts, statisticians and others. This map focuses more on externally-facing, cross-cutting units. Thus, the government-wide Joint Data and Analysis Centre in the Cabinet Office is in. But the Ministry of Justice Evidence and Partnerships Hub is out, despite having a dedicated team who work with external academics. Future iterations of this map can include more of these bodies.
But those are the deliberate omissions – although I’m sure there are other organisations that I have left out by mistake. As the cartographer Mark Monmonier says in his classic How to Lie with Maps, ‘a good map tells a multitude of little white lies’ (2018 p.27).
Perhaps the biggest area missing is not organisations at all, but the processes. Political scientists like Matt Flinders at Sheffield University have criticised others for spending too much time looking at the central official ‘machinery’ of government. Maps need to capture relationships and the tacit, not just organisations and the explicit. Applying a systems-thinking lens can help explore the unpredictable, constantly evolving cats’ cradle of inter-connections. While the current map focuses on ‘who,’ a future iteration could capture more of the ‘how’, including mechanisms like Areas of Research Interest, or public policy exchange schemes.
Finally, it's important to remember the power dynamics inherent in mapping. Critical cartographers stress how often maps are tools of control and for staking a claim to ownership. However, the beauty of a map built on a platform like Kumu is its openness. It's designed so that new organisations can be easily added. To suggest organisations that need to be included you can email secretariat@upen.ac.uk.
You can explore UPEN's map here.
