Academic Policy Interactions in UK Behavioural Science

Spoke at a panel today on academic-policy interactions in behavioural science as part of an excellent event for UK policymakers organised by HMRC behavioural insights and trials team and hosted by School for Government at King's College London. From my side (and also excellently articulated by Professor Brooke Rogers), behavioural science in government is not new and did not start with the behavioural insights team. But the energy of that period and the work of those colleagues was a major source of acceleration of the idea of behavioural research being embedded into public policy and regulation. There has been huge progress in the depth and quality of the information, and in my view there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the quality of the field going forward nationally and globally, particularly as there are far more people trained in the area, more solid expectations about can be achieved by a behavioural evidence function, and more people working directly in public policy who have awareness of the type of work that can be done and capacity to co-ordinate such work. The behavioural dimensions of issues like climate, financial instability, conflict, AI are all vast and as daunting as they are, it is still exciting to see emerging generations of people working on these areas, and bringing new ideas. Many other speakers at the conference spoke or will speak about challenges and points of optimism in these spaces. I could not stay for all talks due to teaching commitment here. But look forward to talking through many of these issues throughout this year and to participate and contribute to more events bringing together research and policy. (h/t Martha Férez for photo).