Campus talks: The secrets of effective policy engagement - from two academics who have worked in government
Campus Talks by Times Higher EducationShow Notes
Hear from two academic policy experts, one in the UK and one in the US, who discuss the most effective ways that researchers can share their expertise with politicians and civil servants. We speak to: Michael Sanders is a professor of public policy at Kings College London and director of the School for Government. In addition to his academic career, he has worked in government as chief scientist on the Behavioural Insights Team and was the founding chief executive of What Works for Children’s Social Care. David Garcia is a professor with Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Prior to joining ASU, he helped found the Arizona Center for Public Policy - ThinkAZ, and he was worked as an associate superintendent and a director of research and policy with Arizona Department of Education. He is also a former legislative staffer with the Arizona State Senate and was the 2018 Democratic candidate for governor of Arizona. For more advice and insight on how best to engage policymakers with your research, take a look at our latest spotlight: An academics' guide to policy impact.
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Learning science has moved university teaching on from lecturers pouring knowledge into students’ heads. Today, effective educators see two-way engagement and participation as key drivers of learning. Pedagogies such as active learning as well as the need for inclusive, welcoming classrooms are more embedded into university practice, thanks to the research and advocacy of experts such as this Campus Talks guest. David Gooblar is associate professor of English and director of general education literature at the University of Iowa. In the latter position, he oversees a cohort of about 3,000 undergraduate students and supervises about 50 instructors. With a research focus on higher education, race and gender, he is author of One Classroom at a Time: How Better Teaching Can Make College More Equitable (Harvard University Press, 2025) and The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You About College Teaching (HUP, 2019). His column on college teaching ran in The Chronicle of Higher Education from 2013 to 2020 and he shared teaching insights in his newsletter Pedagogy Unbound. In this conversation, he offers advice to tackle common teaching challenges such as getting students to do the reading, contribute to class discussions and engage critically with AI. In the latest Campus spotlight guide, experts from around the world share more advice on how to be an even better teacher. Campus Talks: Backwards course design – from learning outcomes to assessment to activities To book a place at the Innovation & Impact Summit 2026 in Seoul on 17-19 November, go to Book tickets | THE Innovation & Impact Summit 2026 and use the promo code CAMPUS20 for a 20 per cent discount.
Drawing on research into the experiences of Chinese academics in the UK, we hear how these subtle but powerful discriminatory acts manifest in universities and what could be done to address them - - - Microaggressions are often overlooked in the official literature on discrimination which tends to focus on more explicit behaviours that can be readily identified and dealt with. Yet these seemingly subtle acts can have a big impact on those subjected to them, as this week’s podcast guest explains. Ming Cheng, professor of higher education at Sheffield Hallam University, carried out research into the experiences of Chinese scholars working in English universities and found a striking prevalence of microaggressions. On this week’s episode of Campus Talks, she shares her definition of microaggressions and gives examples of how they manifest within universities, drawn from her research. We hear about the impact of these behaviours but also what action universities could take to prevent microaggressions going unnamed and unopposed. You can read Ming's full research paper here: Navigating microaggressions in the workplace: experiences of Chinese international academics in England | Higher Education | Springer Nature Link.
As open research moves closer to the mainstream, how it is practised is also responding to broader changes in technology and the research ecosystem. Uses of generative AI – to synthesise data, write academic papers and create funding applications – challenge the status quo, even as the tools bring gains in accessibility and efficiency. How can young scientists take on practices that align with open research goals for outputs that are findable, accessible, reusable and interoperable while still working within traditional measures of academic success? To provide insight and practical advice, this episode talks to two experts in open science, with expertise in teaching, research, publishing and policy: Julia Priess-Buchheit is a professor and researcher at Kiel University in Germany and, since 2018, has been scientific director and chair of the board of the Centre for Constructive Science. Priess-Buchheit has provided scientific advice to international and European initiatives, including the Global Research Initiative on Open Science and the European Open Science Cloud Association. In June, the report she co-authored with a large interdisciplinary team, Open Science and the Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Scientific Exchange, was presented at the meeting of the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology at the European Parliament. Sarahanne Field is an assistant professor in pedagogy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a background in psychology and metascience, she teaches on ethics, research practice, scientific knowledge production and its relationship to society, as well as qualitative research methods. Field is editor-in-chief of the open access Journal of Trial and Error. To learn more about how to foster an open research culture, head to our latest spotlight guide. You’ll find a previous Campus Talks episode about open access here.
While academia offers some well-trodden career paths – from PhD then post-doc to lecturer, professor, departmental head and ultimately into university leadership – there are plenty of alternative routes to success in higher education. On this week’s episode of Campus Talks, we find out how individuals can carve out their own unique careers within the university hierarchy while still demonstrating the necessary knowledge and skills to those all-important promotion and recruitment panels. Harriet Dunbar-Morris, the new deputy president and chief academic officer at South East Technological University (SETU), in Ireland, offers her take on how those in higher education can best prepare for the next career move and what university recruiters themselves could do to attract a greater diversity of talent. Harriet, who was previously pro vice-chancellor academic and provost at the University of Buckingham, shares her own career building strategies, what success looks like for her and why demonstrating impact can and should go beyond just publication and funding records.
An expert in student-centred instructional design talks through the process of creating effective university courses, including the potential of artificial intelligence to support feedback and revision