Why this strategy?
Our previous Public Engagement with Research Strategic Plan successfully built the University’s capacity to support and do engagement with research. A dedicated central team now works to provide direct engagement support through funding, evaluation, coordination, reporting and more, reducing duplication of effort across the University.
This new strategy builds on our previous work and reflects the current priorities for community engagement as a distinct set of purposes and practices within public engagement. For us, ‘community’ means:
- Communities of place – people who live geographically near each other, although not necessarily near Oxford.
- Communities of experience – people who have a shared significant life experience, e.g. are affected by the same health condition.
- Communities of identity – people who have a shared identity, e.g., sex or gender, ethnicity.
- Communities of practice – people who do a similar thing, professionally or for enjoyment.
Our new strategy focuses on nurturing the internal environment for engagement and improving our practice.
The University aims for excellence in all its work, and engagement with research, already an ethical imperative, is now also a measure of excellence for research institutions, especially in the context of knowledge exchange and impact.
In the next Research Excellence Framework (REF), ‘Engagement and impact’ constitutes 25% of an institution’s quality profile. Research England’s Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) measures and compares the performance of higher education providers in public and community engagement. Together, the REF and the KEF set a high bar for purposeful and responsible engagement.
Nonetheless, we recognise the ever-increasing demands on universities and researchers. Those who do engage often draw on limited time and resources, while their efforts are not sufficiently rewarded or recognised.
We do not expect all researchers to do public engagement. However, research should strive to incorporate engagement within its culture and practice. We intend for this strategy to both remove some of the barriers to engagement and improve reward and recognition.
In realising this strategy, the unique strengths within the University’s engagement ecosystem will shape our practice, learning and impact. Namely:
- Our research on Responsible Knowledge Exchange, Innovation and Engagement, which will become integral to our engagement practice.
- Our Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM), whose own research, as well as research from across the University, is incorporated into freely available cultural offerings that reach millions of visitors each year.
- Our overseas research units in Thailand, Vietnam and Kenya, which excel at partnering with communities to involve them in research and evaluating the impact of such involvement.
We believe these strengths, alongside the University’s commitment to excellence and opportunities for engagement, will enable us to achieve our strategy.