Background

Policy is a fairly all-encompassing term that covers any major form of decision-making and as such has relevance across a whole host of areas, including different localities, research areas and disciplines.

You don’t need to be a policy expert to make a difference

‘Policy’ can often seem a daunting and unrelated field to academia. However, it’s a fantastic way to expand the reach & impact of your research – your findings are needed to help inform and influence the decisions of policymakers. This is where AMI can help – the role of our Policy Team is to not only help identify and create opportunities for sharing your research with those who need to hear it; they also will help to translate your research into a digestible format for a non-expert audience. So you really don’t need to be a policy expert to make change as we are on hand to help you.

What getting involved looks like

We have policy work running throughout the year so there is always something to get involved in. Our work mainly falls into two different streams:

• Reactive policy work: this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get involved in policy. Different governments and policymaking bodies (for example the World Health Organisation) regularly release ‘calls for evidence’ throughout the year. These are open consultations, inviting individuals and/or organisations who have relevant expertise or are undertaking relevant research to submit ‘evidence’ to them, to help inform their decisions. ‘Evidence’ often counts as anything submitted in response to the inquiry be it the research you are working on that’s not yet published or your lived experience working in a certain industry area. Keep an eye out for emails announcing any recent ‘calls for evidence’ as these include SharePoint documents where you can directly contribute and get acknowledgment for doing so.
• Proactive policy work: AMI’s Policy Team works throughout the year to identify priority areas and upcoming ‘hot topics’ in the policy sphere. In response to identifying these areas, they work with AMI’s members to put together policy briefings, hold events – such as policy roundtables – and even publish policy papers in AMI’s journals. The Policy Team often announces these ongoing pieces of work via email, asking for members involvement, so keep an eye out for these opportunities! They also often target specific members who have noted a specific interested in getting involved in policy, or specifically reach out to members who have used AMI’s ‘interest tags’ on their profiles so make sure your profile is up to date if you are interested in our work. This leads us on to …

What we need from you, to get you involved

It’s simple! All we need is your name, contact details and a couple of sentences on your research / the area you are working in. We can then contact you whenever a relevant piece of policy work comes up and you can choose to get involved if you wish to. The perks? Your research will be shared with the decision-makers of the world. For any piece of work you get involved with, we will list your name and institution as a key contributor – a great addition to the CV too.