Apply by 14th February to spend 12 months working directly with government departments at Darlington Economic Campus to develop innovative mechanisms for bringing regional academic expertise and insights to bear on issues relating to place-based policy.

Durham and Newcastle Universities, working with Insights North East, are offering a funded opportunity for colleagues based at Durham or Newcastle Universities to spend a focused period embedded within Darlington Economic Campus (DEC). Please note this opportunity is open to academic and professional services staff.

Insights North East (INE) is a unique collaboration between Newcastle and Northumbria Universities and in the process of expanding to include Durham and Sunderland, the NHS and local authorities across the region. INE harnesses the investment in research and regional knowledge assets for the long-term benefit of the North East.

We are offering one Durham University/INE Policy and Research hosted Fellowship, hosted by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) but working across the eight government departments and executive agencies based at DEC.  The successful Fellow will be funded to spend 12 months at DEC, working closely with policy professionals and analysts on a project that strengthens the contribution of academic research to policy development, implementation and/or practice. The Policy Fellow will gain insights that feed directly into local and regional policy development, implementation and evaluation.

Darlington Economic Campus

Darlington Economic Campus (DEC), as a cross government campus, are promoting collaborative working across organisational boundaries, whilst generating meaningful, mutually beneficial partnerships and collaborations across the region. A key part of this is the work with universities across the region to support career development, create learning opportunities for DEC staff, and, most crucially for this proposal, to develop collaborations with academics that can support policy priorities.

At present, DEC’s university outreach work has focused on developing strong relationships with each university and supporting important individual connections between specific policy areas or teams with relevant academics. DEC has an ambition to create a larger, more strategic programme of collaborations that can span across key priority policy areas for DEC and regional universities have been very keen for this work to progress.

At the same time, collaborative efforts are being progressed between the four NECA region universities towards a development of the Insights North East programme, to extend the existing arrangements between the Newcastle and Northumbria University partnership to incorporate Durham and Sunderland Universities as well as between the five North East Universities to establish a North East Universities partnership.

Although there are continuous relationships between DEC and regional universities with some welcome collaborations, there are challenges to address in order to realise the ambition for a bigger, more strategic programme of collaborations that can be sustained over time both for DEC and academia:

• DEC includes government departments representing Treasury, Business, Housing and Communities, Energy, Culture, Science, Education as well as ONS and CMA. It has been a challenge to gain a fuller overview of the policy areas represented on site and the connections between those areas.
• It can be a challenge to identify common priority policy questions across DEC that can help to direct the collaborations with academia. Work has begun through ‘Policy Connect’ groups which have enabled civil servants to coalesce around key topic areas (e.g. place-based policy, economic security etc), bringing policymakers together across departments. But, developing a more systematic mapping of priorities and, within that, prioritising key questions to turn into academic collaborations has still been a big challenge so far. This is something universities would like to support effective collaborations.
• There are existing examples of engagement mechanisms and policy innovation employed by central government and regional university clusters that could usefully be mapped and adapted to the DEC context, offering the opportunity for DEC to be both a centre of innovation for civil service/academic collaboration and an adopter of sector best practices.

The Fellowship

The Policy and Research Fellowship would provide funding for a full time Fellow for up to 12 months, ideally starting in early 2025. The individual would be seconded to or employed by Durham University as the host of the funding but with the intention of working closely with regional universities and all departments hosted in DEC. This offers the benefit of a structured and coordinated approach to engagement, while maximising the unique strengths of each university. This would not impede any existing partnership arrangements between respective institutions and DEC but seek to add value and explore the potential of enhanced coordination.

The project will investigate the following questions defined by the DEC:

• What are the common areas of policy and research interest that are relevant to place based policy, across multiple departments at DEC?
• How can these interests be articulated in a way that helps stimulate interest and engagement from relevant academic researchers and other interested groups?
• What are the key themes and issues that could be the focus of some initial facilitated engagement activity?
• How might different disciplines, researchers and other stakeholders be best engaged in helping to shape future policy ideas?
• Are there particular methods (e.g. design thinking, co-production) that can be tested through engagement with the potential to scale in future.
• What are the mechanisms that DEC can employ to create a sustainable and coordinated approach to academic engagement in place based policy development?
• How can policy development benefit from greater engagement with academic and other stakeholders.
• What is the shared learning that could be used in other settings?

The anticipated outputs and outcomes from the project are likely to be:

• An understanding and articulation of the common areas of placed based policy interest across multiple departments at DEC
• A series of engagement opportunities to facilitate joint working between academic and civil service colleagues, based on the identified areas of interest
• At least one policy report/ process/output, developed through this co-design approach
• A set of recommendations and ideas about how to sustain and embed engagement with the region’s universities and wider civil society groups in DEC’s policy work

Applications should outline how the candidate would approach undertaking this work. Where relevant, this could include how their particular research or professional interests might come into play.

The Policy Fellow will make new contacts and develop new professional relationships, becoming part of the wider network of researchers, policy actors, practitioners and other professionals across the North East of England. This will help to maximise the social and economic impact of the publicly funded research carried out in our world-leading universities. Working in partnership together, we can pool our expertise and resources to address some of the region’s most pressing challenges. By spending time in a new work environment, Policy and Research Fellows will develop new ways of thinking, experience differing perspectives, and gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced in an unfamiliar field. This will contribute towards their continuing professional development, feeding directly back into their everyday work practice. The Fellowship activities will take place across 2025 for a period of up to twelve months. We can be flexible to meet the needs of the successful applicant.

Fellows will be expected to contribute at least 50% of their working time to the Fellowship, and there is scope for both full and part-time working. Please do contact us if you would like to discuss any aspect of flexible working with regard to the Fellowship.

Applicants

Applicants are encouraged to consider the aims and objectives of the fellowship above and provide an outline of how they would approach this, including giving details of any relevant experience and interests. Applicants should be willing to work in a collaborative way, using the opportunity to embed within the DEC and shape the project around the questions defined above.

The opportunity is open to staff on both academic and professional service contracts.

Applications should be submitted before the deadline of 7 February, with interviews in mid/late February..

This is a competitive programme. Applications will be assessed via a joint selection panel featuring representatives from Durham, Newcastle, INE and DEC.

Applicants should discuss this opportunity with their subject lead/direct manager/line manager and, where relevant, their Head of School/Department/unit manager, before submitting an application. We ask that you include a letter of support from your Head of School/Department/unit manager as part of your application. Applicants are also encouraged to consult their local research support team to ensure compliance with costings and eligibility criteria, approval processes and guidelines.

We encourage any prospective applicants to get in touch, and please contact us in advance of your application if you have any particular needs that may need additional consideration. For this and any other questions regarding your application, please email Neil Heckels, Senior Policy Engagement Manager at Durham University neil.heckels@durham.ac.uk

Activities

Activities that would be covered by the Fellowship scheme include:

• Activities (seminars, meetings, workshops) to facilitate the development and management of relationships with colleagues from the policy sector
• Co-design of research-led tools and resources aimed at maximising the application of research outputs in policy settings
• User-led, co-produced research, where the Fellow engages directly with policy makers and/or practitioners to jointly shape the research agenda and apply research to live policy or practice issues.

Fellowships will not fund:

• Research consultancy
• Student placements (as these have a different funding mechanism across both universities)
• Projects for retired/Emeritus staff
• Academic conferences that are insufficiently focused on policy engagement.

Outputs. Fellows will be expected to produce short reports during and after their Fellowship, some of which will be publicised on the universities’ and INE websites and through social media. These reports will also help us to improve the Fellowship experience and offer in future years.

Funding

There is a total budget of £55,000 available for the project. We will provide salary costs/teaching buyout and directly related project costs up to a total cost of £35,000 and would expect an element of the budget to be used as a flexible fund to facilitate academic engagement in the policy projects identified through the fellowship. The directly related costs may also include additional funding for expenses associated with Fellowship work (e.g. travel over normal work-related travel costs; attending conferences; producing publications, etc). This resource will be negotiated with the Fellow’s home Unit/School on an individual basis.

The ESRC has provided funding to Durham and Newcastle Universities, via the Creating Opportunities through Local Innovation Fellowships (COLIF) programme, as part of their support for Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAAs) for a Policy and Research Fellowship to support the establishment of meaningful collaborations between academia and DEC that can seek to address the above challenges.

Although the funding is for two universities, the intention is to work with Insights North East to broaden the scope to the other universities in the region: Northumbria and Sunderland as part of a broadened INE partnership and Teesside, linked to developments to establish a North East Universities partnership. The Policy Fellowship can help as a practical demonstration of university collaboration and coordination on place-based policy development as these new governance structures emerge. The fellowship can draw equally from experience and expertise from both the North East and Tees Valley Combined Authority areas. Additional funding from the Teesside University AHRC Impact Accelerator will also support creative, community and civic engagement across the region.

Working arrangements

It is expected that the Fellow will take a hybrid approach to flexible working, being based between Durham University, INE and DEC, but with a substantive time spent in DEC working across departments. The Durham and INE team will work with the Fellow and DEC to develop key contacts and support induction/practical working arrangements. DEC will provide desk space, access to premises, IT log-in, support with induction and networking. The opportunity is open to employees of Durham and Newcastle Universities only. We are committed to supporting equality, diversity and inclusion. We strongly welcome applications from colleagues from all university Faculties, Departments, Schools and units, at all levels of their career (including early career), and on all contract types (academic, Professional Services, technical, full/part-time, open-ended/fixed-term, etc). Prospective Fellows must hold a contract of employment that runs for the duration of their Fellowship. Applications are equally welcome from colleagues new to, or experienced in, policy engagement.

We encourage any prospective applicants to get in touch, and please contact us in advance of your application if you have any particular needs that may need additional consideration. For this and any other questions regarding your application, please email Neil Heckels, Senior Policy Engagement Manager at Durham University neil.heckels@durham.ac.uk