Fellowship funding awarded to Social Scientists to deepen partnerships beyond academia
Four social sciences projects from University of Oxford have collectively been awarded £80,000 to develop knowledge exchange projects with partners across the UK and beyond. The Engagement Fellowship scheme - supported by the Social Sciences Division and funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) - enables researchers to develop their engagement skills whilst building meaningful, long-lasting partnerships, bringing valuable research insights to bear on real-world challenges and significantly growing their research impact.
Spanning a variety of disciplines, partnerships and types of knowledge exchange activities, the projects range from investigating the use of police custody as a place of immigration detention in the UK, to exploring how local and regional organisations can work together to tackle the decarbonisation of heat in buildings, to developing a collaborative research programme to challenge policy and practice around punishment for severe crimes in Nigeria, and understanding the effectiveness of provider-led interventions to strengthen and scale transition to work support for care leavers in Higher Education.
Each collaboration will see either a University of Oxford researcher embedded within their partner organisation for up to six months, or colleagues from those organisations embedded at the University, to facilitate deep and rich exchanges of expertise and ideas. This has substantial benefits to the researchers, partner organisations and their wider communities.
The successful projects
Immigration Detainees in Police Custody
Professor Mary Bosworth (Lead Researcher), Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law, partnering with Gee Manoharan (Engagement Fellow), Association of Visitors to Immigration Detention (AVID), and the Independent Custody Visiting Association (ICVA) .
"I’ve been inside. I know what detention does to people. Now Immigration detention is showing up in police cells. There’s a gap between what’s happening under immigration powers in police custody and what’s visible to scrutiny. This engagement fellowship will deepen our work with academic rigour, connecting lived experience knowledge, with research tools that can turn testimonies into evidence that can shift policy. We need to understand this shift before more people slip through the cracks."
Gee Manoharan, Co-Director of policy and influencing, Association of Visitors to Immigration Detention (AVID)
Marshalling Law, Psychology, Criminology and Advocacy to Understand ‘Death Row Phenomenon’: developing a collaborative research programme
Professor Carolyn Hoyle (Lead Researcher) and Dr Lucrezia Rizzelli (Engagement Fellow), Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law, partnering with the Death Penalty Project
"This fellowship will provide an invaluable opportunity to strengthen links between academia and civil society and contribute empirical and policy-relevant research on the death penalty in Nigeria."
Saul Lehrfreund, Co-executive Director at the Death Penalty Project.
Effective Provider-Led Interventions to Support Care Leavers’ Access, Participation and Achievement in Higher Education and Transition to Work
Professor James Robson (Lead Researcher) and Dr Yushan Xie (Engagement Fellow), both Department of Education, partnering with UK Department for Education.
"We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with the Department for Education to co-develop research that improves care leavers’ access and participation in HE and supports their transition to work. This collaboration will strengthen the research-policy exchange and help address persistent challenges around equity, justice, and inclusion in higher education."
Dr Yushan Xie, Engagement Fellow
Bridging Levels of Governance in Britain’s Heat Transition - Knowledge Exchange through the RESP Process
Professor Jan Rosenow (Lead Researcher) and Dr Jake Barnes (Engagement Fellow), both School of Geography and the Environment, partnering with Oxfordshire County Council, and with support from National Energy System Operator (NESO).
"Regional Energy Strategic Plans represent a step-change in how Britain plans and delivers its energy transition, bringing national ambition together with local action. I am delighted to have secured this fellowship as it will enable us to put our research to work at a critical moment, helping to strengthen these new planning processes as they take shape."
Dr Jake Barnes, Engagement Fellow
Find out more
Are you a social scientist interested in knowledge exchange and impact? Discover more here: https://www.socsci.ox.ac.uk/support-for-researchers
Do you want to find out more about potential collaboration with social sciences researchers at Oxford? Please contact partnerships@sosci.ox.ac.uk or find out more at https://www.socsci.ox.ac.uk/collaboration-and-engagement
