Humanities and Public Policy Workshop - ‘Policy engagement as a pathway to impact'

What’s in public policy engagement for humanities researchers?

Research evidence and expertise from the humanities can benefit public policy decision making in myriad ways. However, as a researcher it can be a challenge to know how to engage with policymakers, what kind of impact your research might have, and importantly, how engaging with public policy can benefit your research. This workshop explores the rewards and challenges of public policy engagement from the perspective of humanities researchers at different career stages and considers practical ways to plan for policy engagement as a pathway to research impact. Speakers include Helen Small, Merton Professor of English Language and Literature; Dr Arlene Holmes-Henderson, Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Classics; Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China; and Charlotte Medland, the Innovation, Impact & Evaluation Facilitator for the Humanities Division. 

Hosted by the Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) and TORCH, the session will be chaired by Dr Jennifer Crane, a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Faculty of History and member of the OPEN Steering Group. She has research interests in childhood, health, welfare, and activism. Her book is Childhood Protection in England, 1960-2000: Expertise, Experience, and Emotion. 

Join or find out more about the Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) 

Register via Eventbrite 

Please note, this event is only open to Oxford researchers.  

You can contact Jessie Simkiss, Humanities and Public Policy Officer, at jessica.simkiss@theology.ox.ac.uk  

The speakers:

Dr Arlene Holmes-Henderson leads research into the impact of Latin and Greek on children’s cognitive development for the Classics in Communities Project, which won a Vice-Chancellor's Education award in 2020. She is a TORCH Knowledge Exchange Fellow, working with the Department for Education in a research and public policy partnership. She is also an expert advisor to the all-party parliamentary group on oracy education and the all-party parliamentary group on political literacy. In 2021, she became the first OPEN Leader in the Humanities Division. 

Charlotte Medland is the first point of contact on impact for researchers, faculty academic and administrative leads, and research facilitators. Charlotte supports academic colleagues in planning, designing, recording, and evaluating the current and potential impact(s) of their research projects and activity. Working closely with divisional, University, and national colleagues, she offers guidance on REF impact case studies as well as longer-term research and collaboration possibilities that offer impact. 

Helen Small has had extensive international experience of humanities policy engagement in response to her book The Value of the Humanities (2013); she also has ongoing interests in policy work around old age care. She prepared the Impact Case Studies for English in the REF exercise (just completed) and in 2013. 

Rana Mitter OBE FBA has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. He is co-author, with Sophia Gaston, of the report “Conceptualizing a UK-China Engagement Strategy” (British Foreign Policy Group, 2020). He is the author of several books, including China’s War with Japan: The Struggle for Survival, 1937-1945 (Penguin, 2013), which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard, 2020).