The Role of Public Engagement Professionals
Public Engagement Professionals (PEPs) from seven universities across England commissioned a evidence gathering and synthesis to examine how Research England’s Participatory Research Fund is enabling effective, community?centred research across Higher Education.
This report demonstrates that PEPs are crucial to ensuring participatory research funding investments deliver meaningful outcomes. Their ability to bridge institutional systems and community priorities, challenge restrictive processes, and support equitable research practices ensures that participatory research funding is used for genuinely collaborative and socially impactful work.
It identifies six complementary approaches that PEPs can bring to fund stewardship—strategic alignment, partnership?building, innovation, capacity?building, systems improvement, and critical institutional reflection.
The findings recommend protecting participatory research funding, adopting multi?year funding models, and formally recognising PEPs as the appropriate leads for managing this work, given their specialist skills and sector-wide impact.
Participatory Research Funding: The Role and Value of Public Engagement Professionals
Participatory Research Funding: The Role and Value of Public Engagement Professionals Infographic
This work was commissioned by Public Engagement Professionals from seven higher education providers (the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Leeds and Plymouth, Imperial College London, and King’s College London) and it was funded by Research England through the Participatory Research Fund allocation at King’s College, London, and the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement.
