Meet Dewi Knight, Director of PolicyWISE

Dewi sat down with Catherine May, PolicyWISE’s Senior External Affairs and Communications Manager to discuss his background, ambitions and passion for comparative research and policy development, and plans for PolicyWISE in the months ahead. Dewi has held senior policy and strategy roles in government, universities, and international relations, is a UKRI Future Leaders Mentor and an experienced board member.

You’ve worked in government, universities and in international relations – what was attractive about setting up PolicyWISE?

I’ve always enjoyed the opportunities, and challenges, of creating new projects and teams. And the concept of PolicyWISE – working across the nations, bringing governments and academia together, and sharing knowledge and ideas – felt like an ideal fit.

Being hosted at The Open University was a big draw for me as well. I worked at The OU many years ago, and in many ways this felt like coming home.

Being a genuine four nations university, with a strong social mission that drives research and learning, means it is perfectly placed to support us in our task to improve how governments and academics work together in and across the nations of the UK and Ireland to solve policy challenges.

In my role in government, I helped secure a number of international, student and policy partnerships, and I’m keen to bring the same commitment to collaboration and working across borders and boundaries to PolicyWISE.

What’s unique about the PolicyWISE model and ambitions?

Quite simply, we are the only UK and Ireland comparative policy research and knowledge exchange initiative. No-one else quite works in the way that we do – cross-nation, with governments and parliaments, and connecting comparative research to policy.

Working with the PolicyWISE team, we’ve developed a way of working that has three main elements.

Firstly, we create and maintain neutral but constructive spaces for policy professionals and academics across the nations to develop relationships, respect, and knowledge. Secondly, this then means we can work with partners to support a common cross-nation culture of sharing insight, research and context in a comparative and collaborative way. And thirdly, working together, we can help all governments focus on evidence-informed solutions for citizens and communities, informed by comparative and collaborative research.

I’m also excited about our Wise in 5 briefings. We’ve tested and refined these with critical friends in governments, parliaments and university partners, and I think they will prove invaluable to anyone interested in comparative policy across the UK and Ireland.

What we’re doing is unique. These are the only regular comparative guides to public policy issues across the nations of the UK and Ireland, which will also highlight relevant comparative and international research.

To get started, we’ve worked with colleagues to produce Wise in 5s on topics as varied as Single-use Plastics, Relationships and sex education, and Tourist tax. Former colleagues know that I can be too partial to a pun or alliteration, so I also think we’ve got a great name and brand for the briefing – WISE (Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England) in Five (it takes just five minutes to read)! And even better, it was a team effort to come up with that name.

What have you enjoyed during PolicyWISE’s set-up period?

It’s been great building the team and developing our partnerships and relationships across the nations.

I know from my time in government that unfortunately there is sometimes a disconnect between policymaking timeframe and objectives, and the capability and capacity for engagement from the research community.

In the last few months, I’ve found an appetite on both sides (and across nations) to put aside any preconceptions and a willingness to get stuck in and see the advantages of comparative policy research and knowledge exchange.

It's been great catching up with old and new colleagues in The OU, governments and universities across Britain and Ireland.

I’ve also discovered some new coffee shops and bookstores, and the occasional pub, in the different nations, as well as having a chance to revisit some old favourites. Perhaps we could do a comparative series on flat whites or pints across the five jurisdictions!

With general elections on the horizon in the UK and Ireland, and different parties leading the devolved government, what might this mean for comparative policy and knowledge exchange?

It certainly promises to be an interesting time. The pandemic period certainly raised awareness of the different power and political dynamics across these islands. However, personally I think the fact that we have very different parties leading the different governments is an under-analysed and appreciated part of policy and political discourse.

Whilst our focus is on working with policy professionals and researchers in all administrations and nations, the influence of political leadership on approaches to tackling common challenges makes it a fascinating time to engage with comparative policy research.

Looking at the UK situation specifically, national devolution has often been discussed as a ‘policy laboratory’. I think it’s fair to say that this hasn’t always meant constructive knowledge exchange and policy learning between administrations.

We hope to do our bit to improve this, through inter-governmental and cross-governmental working, connecting officials with research and researchers, and responding to an increased call for comparative analysis and research.

What can we expect over the next 18 months?

We’ve taken the time to work with colleagues in government to identify key policy areas of shared interest that would benefit from knowledge exchange, comparative research, and policy analysis.

We’re about to start on these three projects, including one on AI and its relationship to policymaking. It will be a new model and new way of working, creating joint-project cohorts across administrations, nations and academia, but one that is very exciting.

We will also continue to work at pace to support policy analysis, development and consideration, working with governments, parliaments and the wider policy community. We will do this across public policy issues, but always in a way that is informed by cross-nation comparative research and knowledge exchange.

I’m also excited about the further development of our Mind Your Policy Language series. Again this is something unique that PolicyWISE does. It is the only comparative guide to policy language and terms used in, and across, the UK nations and governments.

Above all, we’re committed to excellence, impact and being ambitious for citizens across the nations of the UK and Ireland. We’re operating through a unique model, working cross-nation and I’m excited to see what we achieve by working together in this way.