How to talk to policymakers about research - HEPI Report 156

Applied research Ben Johnson (former Policy Adviser to the Minister for Universities and Science from 2019 to 2021) summarised the general benefit higher education research contributes to UK industry: The government recognises that industry needs to be incentivised to invest and remain in the UK. [...] In terms of disciplines, Dr Diana Beech (former Policy Adviser to three Universities Ministers between 2018 and 2019) suggested policymakers ‘do not see the value of the humanities until it comes to the implementation, and it is seen as part of the process of a wider scientific project’. [...] For example, she said, ‘if you want to get rid of the Ebola www.hepi.ac.uk 11 pandemic, you need the science to do the vaccine, but then you also need the cultural anthropologist to be able to implement it – you need the lawyers, you need the historians’. [...] He used the example of a Shakespeare academic: The argument that the cultural industry is one of Britain’s great successes – and that the arts and humanities contribute to that – is a good one. [...] There is scope and appetite for articulating the value of research in ways that do not relate solely to its applied benefits – but to do so requires the imagination and boldness to formulate a vision of how the value of higher education research connects to the ideas of society.