This fellowship explores how What Works Centres capture and evidence their impact, and how learning and practice can be shared across the What Works Network. Working in partnership with the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP), the project will bring together research and practice to better understand the approaches used by knowledge-brokering organisations to identify, record and demonstrate their impact.

A key focus of the fellowship is the challenge of understanding what happens between knowledge-brokering activities and longer-term impacts on policy and practice. It will examine the methods and tools used to capture different forms of impact, including the intermediate outcomes that can help demonstrate progress towards longer-term change.

The project combines a review of academic and grey literature with interviews across the What Works Network. This will provide an overview of existing approaches while also exploring how they are applied in practice and in different organisational contexts. A cross-centre peer learning workshop and follow-up activities will create opportunities for What Works Centres to reflect collectively on current practice, share learning and identify practical ways of strengthening their approaches.

Through this work, the fellowship aims to make existing practices more visible and comparable; support more robust approaches to capturing and evidencing impact; and strengthen relationships and peer learning across the What Works Network and wider policy community. This includes collaboration with the University Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) and its Community of Practice on Knowledge Mobilisation. In the longer term, it aims to contribute to stronger systems and practices for understanding, articulating and sharing the impact of knowledge brokering.