Inaugural lecture of Professor Kathryn Oliver
Research is something we spend a lot of money and time on — as individuals, organisations, and states. But is it worth it? Do we get bang for our buck? Who really benefits? And does research actually help where it’s needed?
In this lecture, Professor Oliver talks about her career exploring these questions, ploughing between the rows of evidence and policy. She began in molecular biology, took detours through public health, sociology, and engineering, and eventually discovered that she was more of a permanent hitchhiker than a resident of any one discipline. Being a perpetual outsider has been a demanding but rewarding learning opportunity — a front-row seat on the relationship between research and policy — and a chance to learn from people across many backgrounds and organisations.
She shares experiences of working with governments at different levels and in different countries to explore what counts as evidence, what gets used, and why carefully prepared research so often fails to flourish in policy settings. This lecture reflects on those encounters, sharing stories from a career spent in the fertile but messy ground between science and policy — and asking: what makes research useful, who gets to decide, and, in the end, is research really worth it?
The lecture will take place from 17:15 - 18:15, followed by a 1-hour in-person drinks reception in the Pumphandle Social.
Speaker
Professor Kathryn Oliver
Professor Kathryn Oliver is a social scientist, interested in how we make, mobilise and use evidence in policy and practice. With Annette Boaz, She co-directs the research collaboration Transforming Evidence, which brings together funders, decision-makers, practitioners and researchers from a range of disciplines and sectors. We aim to both do research on evidence production and use, and to ensure that the research we do is used.
She started work as a molecular biologist, and moved into social sciences and public health when conducting systematic reviews for policymakers, at the EPPI Centre. Interested in how evidence informed policy, she used social network analysis to explore the role of social structure in evidence use in local government for her PhD. During this work she connected with a hugely interdisciplinary community of researchers with similar interests, which led ultimately to the formation of Transforming Evidence. She has held research and teaching posts at Manchester, Oxford and UCL, and now at LSHTM.
She is currently working as a Fellow in the UK Government Office for Science, exploring how evidence knowledge needs are articulated and acted on by central government. Other bits of work include evaluation of various academic-policy engagement initiatives, working with funders and decision-makers in the UK, EU and USA to understand science-policy systems, and developing the field of evidence studies. She also has a long-standing interest in the evaluation of unintended effects of policies and practices.
Event notices
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