Professor Simeon Yates, Professor of Digital Culture, University of Liverpool

In this video interview, Professor Simeon Yates shares advice from his experiences of engaging with parliamentary select committees and POST (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology).

Here is a transcript of the video interview.

Below you can find some selected quotes from the video interview.

“...because we've tried to do impactful policy-facing work on the back of our research work, that's put us in contact with government agencies, national and local government. And so the idea of giving evidence or providing support kind of becomes part of that package and you're aware of it and start to see the channels by which you can do it.”

“…parliamentarians, Members of the House of Lords, the people receiving this evidence kind of need it much the same way as you would present it to the well-informed charity people you work with or the well-informed industry person… There's no point just kind of throwing statistics and graphs at people. Boil it down to what are the key messages? … Those are the ones that you want policymakers to think about and listen to.”

“…especially for those of us working in social sciences, we don't want to just, it just to sit on the shelf. We want it to have some kind of impact. And often it’s not going to have an impact unless there’s a policy environment for it to kind of embed in. And so you need to have at least some engagement with the processes of Parliament and Government to make sure that happens.”