Registration is required
From: 22 Sep 2017, 10 a.m.To: None
Location: Energy Safety Research Institute, Bay Campus
Michael Gove’s statement that Britain has ‘had enough of experts’ and the turn against expert opinion in the wake of the Brexit vote, along with the rise of anti-science beliefs such as climate change scepticism and anti-vaccination, have created new challenges for the use of academic expertise in making public policy.
The Initiative for Managing Policymaker-Academic Cooperation and Knowledge Transfer (IMPACKT) will be holding an event on the Bay Campus at Swansea University looking at how academics and policymakers can better make use of expertise in policy-making.
The workshop will bring together academics and policymakers and policy experts from different levels of government to discuss the use of academic expertise and evidence on policymaking. While it is mainly aimed at those in engineering, energy, health and medicine, academics and policymakers from all areas are welcome to attend. This workshop aims to answer several key questions about the role of evidence and expertise in policy-making in a changing political context:
1. What role can and should scientific research play in informing public policy? Are there limitations to its usefulness in a political setting, or can it only enhance democracy?
2. How can scientists better embed the social and policy relevance into their research, in a way that engages with policymakers?
3. How can policymakers move beyond a reactive approach to evidence and be more proactive in incorporating it into policymaking?
4. What legitimacy do experts have in the policy-making process? If Britain has ‘had enough of experts’, what can be done to re-establish this link between scientific experts and the public, and scientific experts and policymakers?
5. How can Welsh industry, universities and politics adapt post-Brexit to strengthen the role of Welsh science in policy-making?
The workshop will explore these questions and other related ideas through a morning plenary session featuring Welsh policymakers and academics in a variety of policy areas discussing general challenges and opportunities facing the use of expertise in policymaking in a pre- and post-Brexit world. The afternoon will be used to discuss these issues in more detail as they relate to specific policy areas, namely health and engineering.
Lunch and coffee will be provided, and limited travel assistance is available.
For more information or to register for this event, please contact Dion Curry: D.S.D.Curry@swansea.ac.uk
Eventbrite: http://tinyurl.com/y7twk6b6
Contact: Dr Dion Curry (Email: D.S.D.Curry@swansea.ac.uk)
Event created by: h.baldwin