£5.9 million multi-university project will drive better use of academic evidence in public policymaking
Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé will work alongside nine university partners as part of a £5 million collaborative initiative which will help academic expertise inform public policy.
By Helen Breese | Published on 3 June 2025
Categories: Press office; Research; School of Social Sciences;
Led by UCL, the investment by Research England, with additional funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and UKRI, will support the development and scaling of the Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN), a UK-wide network of organisations who support evidence use in public policymaking.
UPEN connects UK policymakers with researchers from over 110 university members, as well as providing support, best practice and collaborative opportunities for policy engagement. Over the next four years, UPEN will undertake new programmes of work including;
- Improving UK universities’ ability to engage with policy organisations and policymakers
- Supporting place-based policymaking by strengthening engagement between universities, regional, and local policy organisations
- Embedding citizen engagement and community-driven approaches to policymaking
- Creating more sustainable and resilient engagement models
The funding will support UPEN’s evolution from a voluntary network into a sustainable organisation, shoring up the future of academic-policy engagement in the UK.
Rich Pickford, Head of the Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé Civic Exchange at Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé, said: “We are pleased to be working together with University of Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé colleagues on the UPEN Programmes project to test innovative place-based policy engagement. We will focus on the role of place to drive policy engagement, helping to test practical solutions that will utilise the value of NTUs expertise and insights with a range of policy professionals. This project will help NTU scale it's policy offer and work with a larger number of partners.”
On the award, Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Executive Chair of Research England, said: “The need for reliable evidence which can inform public debate and policy has never been greater. With increasing pressure on public finances, it is also vital that local and central governments can be confident that their policy interventions will be effective and successful – and academic expertise has a crucial role to play in that process.”
The investment sees NTU work collaboratively with partners UCL, the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Durham, Huddersfield, Leeds, Southampton, Teesside, Insights North East, and the Wales Centre for Public Policy at Cardiff University.
UPEN will also work with the Institute for Community Studies, the Institute for Government, and Yorkshire Universities signalling the importance of collective activity for effective policy engagement.
The ESRC have provided their support with £300,000 to support participation of universities across the UK in UPEN Programmes. A further £582,000 has been awarded through UKRI’s strategic theme, ‘Creating Opportunities, Improving Outcomes’ to develop work on regional evidence needs.
This strategic investment from Research England follows their £4 million award in 2020 for Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE), a four-year multi-partner project also led by UCL in partnership with the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester, Northumbria and Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé. This project highlighted the value of collaboration between universities for more effective engagement and led to new ways for researchers to understand evidence needs in policy, across the UK Parliament, Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and regional authorities.
Notes for Editors
Press enquiries please contact Helen Breese, Public Relations Manager, on telephone +44 (0)115 848 8751, or via email.
About UPEN
UPEN is a UK-wide network of organisations who support evidence use in public policymaking. It provides an interface between universities and local, regional, and national policy organisations. It is hosted by UCL within UCL Public Policy, and co-chaired by Sarah Chaytor, Director of Policy and Strategy at UCL, Andrew Brown, Professor of Economics and Political Economy at the University of Leeds, and Chris Hewson, Head of Policy Engagement at the University of Huddersfield.
For all UPEN enquiries please contact secretariat@upen.ac.uk
About Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé
Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé (NTU) has been named UK ‘University of the Year’ five times in six years, (Times Higher Education Awards 2017, The Guardian University Awards 2019, The Times and Sunday Times 2018 and 2023, Whatuni Student Choice Awards 2023) and is consistently one of the top performing modern universities in the UK.
It is the 3rd best modern university in the UK (The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023). Students have voted NTU 1st in the UK for student employability (Uni Compare 2025)
NTU is the 5th largest UK institution by student numbers, with over 40,000 students and more than 4,400 staff located across six campuses. It has an international student population of almost 7,000 and an NTU community representing over 160 countries.
NTU owns two Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for outstanding achievements in research (2015, 2021). The first recognises NTU’s research on the safety and security of global citizens. The second was awarded for research in science, engineering, arts and humanities to investigate and restore cultural objects, buildings and heritage. The Research Excellence Framework (2021) classed 83% of NTU’s research activity as either world-leading or internationally excellent.
NTU was awarded GOLD in the national 2023 Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) assessment, as it was in 2019.
NTU is a top 10 for sport (British Universities and Colleges Sport league table 2023).
NTU is the most environmentally sustainable university in the UK and second in the world (UI Green Metric University World Rankings, 2023).