Prestigious research fellowship awarded to School of Sociology and Social Policy academic

Dr Ana Manzano, one of 44 fellows to be selected for the UKRI Policy Fellowships programme, will support the Northern Ireland Executive with its 10x Innovation Policy.

Dr Ana Manzano, Associate Professor in Public Policy in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship on the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Policy Fellowships programme.

Following a successful pilot, run by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in 2021, the programme has now more than doubled in scale with 44 academic fellows selected to work in government departments and What Works Centres across the UK.

Dr Manzano will work in the Northern Ireland Executive’s Department for the Economy for 18 months on an ‘Evaluating Innovation’ Policy Research Fellowship. Manzano, a leading academic authority on the relationship between evaluation theory, methods and evidence, will support the Department’s 10x Innovation Policy by creating an evidence base to understand the impact of innovative, inclusive and green growth and to aid future decision-making.

The policy fellowship programmes aim to help fulfil the potential of research and expertise to inform and shape effective public policy and its implementation. As part of the scheme, the cohort of fellows get a chance to connect with each other and with partner organisations and universities to build new networks and peer support groups.

 This programme represents a major increase of UKRI’s investment in connecting research and policy. It will put some of the UK’s brightest researchers at the heart of government, to help inform the way policy is made.

The 2023 scheme is funded by the ESRC (including Dr Manzano’s fellowship), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).