How do science and policy strengthen each other? Institute of Public Administration leads €4.75 million research project
Leiden University is the coordinating institution for the new NWA project Cocreating Research to Improve Science for Policy (CRISP), for which NWO has awarded a €4.75 million grant. The project is led by Valérie Pattyn and Johan Christensen (FGGA).
Pattyn and Christensen, experts on knowledge for policy at Leiden University’s Institute of Public Administration, are doing this together with René Torenvlied and Barend van der Meulen of the University of Twente. In a broad national consortium, 25 organisations are working together to build a stronger connection between science and policy.
The grant was awarded under the National Science Agenda (NWA) call 'Science for Policy'. The project brings together researchers, policymakers and professionals from science, higher education and the public sector.
The goal is to better understand and strengthen how scientific knowledge can support policymaking. Dialogue and learning are central to this: between researchers and policymakers, between different scientific disciplines, and between knowledge and practice.
Collaboration across faculty boundaries
Leiden University’s Institute of Public Administration is the coordinating institution for the project. The institute works closely with researchers from the Faculty of Law, led by Miranda Boone, and with Vincent Traag of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS).
This brings together expertise in governance and public policy, law, and the relationship between science, technology and society. These different perspectives are essential to better understand how scientific knowledge finds its way into policy, how questions from policy practice can contribute to new research, and how existing knowledge can be better made accessible.
25 organisations combine their knowledge
In addition to Leiden University, 24 partners are participating in the project. The €4.75 million award makes it possible to run a large-scale collaboration in which different disciplines and organisations work jointly on shared issues, which they will study in so-called policy labs. Over the five-year project, knowledge-for-policy practices will be examined across a number of themes, ranging from higher education policy to sanctions policy, hybrid threats, the societal service programme, and regional policy challenges.
Working together for societal impact
The project explicitly aims to contribute to more effective knowledge-for-policy practices, and seeks to deliver insights from which not only policymakers, but also researchers who aspire to have greater impact on policy, can learn. Ultimately, the ambition is that more effective policy will also contribute to citizens’ trust in government.
‘This research project is a unique opportunity to work together with policymakers to identify their specific knowledge needs and the obstacles that stand in the way of knowledge-driven work. This will allow us to learn how knowledge arrangements can be set up to promote the use of policy-relevant knowledge produced by universities, universities of applied sciences, or other knowledge institutions,’ Valérie Pattyn said when asked about the new NWA project.
Partners in the consortium
The consortium consists of:
- Behavioral Insights Netwerk Nederland
- The Hague University of Applied Sciences
- Windesheim University of Applied Sciences
- Interprovinciaal Overleg
- Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations
- Ministry of Defence
- Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management
- Ministry of Justice and Security
- Ministry of Education, Culture and Science
- Netherlands Defence Academy
- Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO)
- Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement
- Open University of the Netherlands
- Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL)
- Radboud University
- University of Groningen
- Saxion University of Applied Sciences
- University Medical Center Utrecht
- University of Amsterdam
- Leiden University
- University of Twente
- Utrecht University
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
- Research and Documentation Centre (WODC)
- Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR)