What do policy makers really do?

The question is important because making policy engages a great number of people one way or another, and what they do they might do well or badly.  Our standard answers are rather hazy, not least because policy making entails such great numbers of people doing a great...

Local politics in Scotland: the work of the councillor

Three reports for APSE (Association for Public Service Excellence), part of continuing work with Professor Steve Griggs at De Montfort University, Leicester, explore the work entailed in local politics, focusing on the role of the councillor: Anderson, D, Barnett, N,...

Reference Group on In/Equalities

A Reference Group is a community of policy makers and practitioners working in different contexts in pursuit of a common goal.  They meet periodically in order to reflect, both individually and collectively, on the challenges they face in doing so: they discuss their...

Scottish Drugs Policy Conversations

The Academy of Government supported the early development of the Scottish Drugs Policy Conversations, which address changing patterns of drug use and related harm, developments in policy and practice in Scotland and other countries, new research findings as well as...

Exchange Fellowships

at the Academy of Government provide a framework in which professionals and practitioners work with an academic counterpart on a joint project…

Meet Bob Forsyth

who is Director of the European Youth Card Association, and currently Exchange Fellow in the School, working with Richard Freeman… Exchange Fellowships support collaborations between University-based researchers and leading practitioners. Where Bob is looking...

Mental health policy: ‘learning what we know’

Our work in the KNOWandPOL project described the process by which the mental health policy community in Scotland and in Europe comes to ‘know what it knows’; its potential value lies in helping that community to deploy its various knowledges both more...

Mental Health Conversations

The Public Policy Network’s Mental Health Conversations were about the way we experience and respond to mental health and illness, both as individuals and as a society… The Mental Health Conversations bring together policy makers, researchers,...

PIKEN

The Policy Impact and Knowledge Exchange Network (PIKEN) brought together early career researchers from local and national government, the third sector and universities across Scotland in a series of meetings in 2009-2010 to explore the relationship between research...