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This is the final report of the Open University’s RCUK-funded Public Engagement with Research Catalyst, ‘An open research university’, a project designed to create the conditions in which engaged research can flourish. The report describes an evidence-based strategy designed to embed engaged research within the University’s strategic planning for research and the operational practices of researchers. This programme of organisational change was informed by action research, working collaboratively with researchers at all levels across the institution to identify and implement strategies that work for them and the stakeholders, user communities and members of the public that engage with their research. Through a combination of surveys, interviews and interventions, we identified a number of challenges and proposed solutions to address them. For example, we found that researchers have a relatively narrow view of engaged research and the communities with which they interact and very few researchers strategically evaluate their engaged research activities. The report documents some of the interventions we have introduced with the aim of broadening and deepening future researcher engagement, including a definition of engaged research and revised promotion criteria that include knowledge exchange profiles. In conclusion, we argue that there is still a battle to be won for open and engaged research. For a culture of engaged research to be sustainable in the medium to long-term requires ongoing recognition and acceptance of its progressive value(s) by researchers, universities, funders and ultimately, policy-makers.

Foremost in contemporary debates about democratic renewal and the re-engagement of citizens in the polity are concerns about publicness and the modes of politics that may be suited to this task. In this thesis case studies of three large-scale public participation exercises are presented: a local governmental exercise; a national popular media initiative and a transnational/translocal social movement event. Engaging with these cases the research explores three, ostensibly different, approaches to and settings of engagement. The study utilises a mix of discourse analysis and participant observation to engage with different features of each case. The outcome of this analysis is an exposition of the forms of publicness and the modes of politics that are summoned up, articulated, negotiated and enacted through the performance of these exercises. Comparing the three cases the thesis then develops two interrelated lines of argument. First, because of a set of tensions inscribed into the ideas of the public summoned up in each setting, the publics of these exercises are characterised as paradoxical publics. And, secondly, the mode of politics privileged across the three settings is characterised as spectacular and experimental. The findings of this research problematise the idea that large scale public participation exercises might somehow enact forms of politics that are more direct. The study also challenges the assumption that such practices might enable publics to act more authentically. Through a consideration of the relationships between a diverse, if limited, sample of contemporary large-scale public participation exercises this study instead contributes to the emerging politics of public mediation.

What happens if we put ‘the public’ at the centre of our efforts to conceptualise, conduct and evaluate publicly engaged research? This Open University pamphlet outlines a public-centric approach to engagement you can make use of in your own settings. Drawing on insights from recent empirical research and key strands of the theoretical literature on the public the pamphlet foregrounds a set of questions you can ask at key stages of the engagement process to help you make choices about how you will engage. The public-centric approach is designed to support researchers working across all disciplines that are involved in publicly engaged research projects. By helping to make sense of the public in public engagement, the pamphlet also sets out to contribute to wider on-going debates and developments concerned with improving the effectiveness of public engagement with research.

This article begins to map out a novel approach to analyzing contemporary contexts of public crisis, relationships between them and possibilities that these scenes hold out for politics. The article illustrates and analyses a small selection of examples of these kinds of contemporary scenes and calls for greater attention to be given to the conditions and consequences of different forms and practices of public and political mediation. In offering a three-fold typology to delineate differences between ‘abject’, ‘audience’ and ‘agentic’ publics the article begins to draw out how political and public futures may be seen as being bound up with how the potentialities, capacities and qualities that publics are imagined to have and resourced to perform. Public action and future publics are therefore analysed here in relation to different versions of contemporary crisis and the political concerns and publics these crises work to articulate, foreground and imaginatively and practically support.

Why does public engagement matter? Why should it matter and how can it be made to matter more? These are the questions Mark Carrigan and Nick Mahony explore by looking at the context of contemporary higher education where technology, institutional pressure, and an increasing diversity of engagement initiatives are emerging, within academia and beyond.

This is the final report of the Open University’s RCUK-funded Public Engagement with Research Catalyst, ‘An open research university’, a project designed to create the conditions in which engaged research can flourish. The report describes an evidence-based strategy designed to embed engaged research within the University’s strategic planning for research and the operational practices of researchers. This programme of organisational change was informed by action research, working collaboratively with researchers at all levels across the institution to identify and implement strategies that work for them and the stakeholders, user communities and members of the public that engage with their research. Through a combination of surveys, interviews and interventions, we identified a number of challenges and proposed solutions to address them. For example, we found that researchers have a relatively narrow view of engaged research and the communities with which they interact and very few researchers strategically evaluate their engaged research activities. The report documents some of the interventions we have introduced with the aim of broadening and deepening future researcher engagement, including a definition of engaged research and revised promotion criteria that include knowledge exchange profiles. In conclusion, we argue that there is still a battle to be won for open and engaged research. For a culture of engaged research to be sustainable in the medium to long-term requires ongoing recognition and acceptance of its progressive value(s) by researchers, universities, funders and ultimately, policy-makers.

What happens if we put ‘the public’ at the centre of our efforts to conceptualise, conduct and evaluate publicly engaged research? This Open University pamphlet outlines a public-centric approach to engagement you can make use of in your own settings. Drawing on insights from recent empirical research and key strands of the theoretical literature on the public the pamphlet foregrounds a set of questions you can ask at key stages of the engagement process to help you make choices about how you will engage. The public-centric approach is designed to support researchers working across all disciplines that are involved in publicly engaged research projects. By helping to make sense of the public in public engagement, the pamphlet also sets out to contribute to wider on-going debates and developments concerned with improving the effectiveness of public engagement with research.

This article begins to map out a novel approach to analyzing contemporary contexts of public crisis, relationships between them and possibilities that these scenes hold out for politics. The article illustrates and analyses a small selection of examples of these kinds of contemporary scenes and calls for greater attention to be given to the conditions and consequences of different forms and practices of public and political mediation. In offering a three-fold typology to delineate differences between ‘abject’, ‘audience’ and ‘agentic’ publics the article begins to draw out how political and public futures may be seen as being bound up with how the potentialities, capacities and qualities that publics are imagined to have and resourced to perform. Public action and future publics are therefore analysed here in relation to different versions of contemporary crisis and the political concerns and publics these crises work to articulate, foreground and imaginatively and practically support.

This research synthesis was commissioned by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to examine audience segmentation methods and tools in the area of public engagement. It provides resources for assessing the ways in which segmentation tools might be used to enhance the various activities through which models of public engagement in higher education are implemented. Understanding the opinions, values, and motivations of members of the public is a crucial feature of successful engagement. Segmentation methods can offer potential resources to help understand the complex set of interests and attitudes that the public have towards higher education. Key findings: There exist a number of existing segmentations which address many of the areas of activity found in Universities and HEIs. These include segmentations which inform strategic planning of communications; segmentations which inform the design of collaborative engagement activities by museums, galleries, and libraries; and segmentations that are used to identify under-represented users and consumers. Segmentation is, on its own, only a tool, used in different ways in different contexts. The broader strategic rationale shaping the application and design of segmentation methods is a crucial factor in determining the utility of segmentation tools. Four issues emerged of particular importance: 1. Segmentation exercises are costly and technically complex. Undertaking segmentations therefore requires significant commitment of financial and professional resources by HEIs; the appropriate interpretation, analysis, and application of segmentation exercises also require high levels of professional capacity and expertise 2. Undertaking a segmentation exercise has implications for the internal organisational operations of HEIs, not only for how they engage with external publics and stakeholders 3. Segmentation tools are adopted to inform interventions o

Foremost in contemporary debates about democratic renewal and the re-engagement of citizens in the polity are concerns about publicness and the modes of politics that may be suited to this task. In this thesis case studies of three large-scale public participation exercises are presented: a local governmental exercise; a national popular media initiative and a transnational/translocal social movement event. Engaging with these cases the research explores three, ostensibly different, approaches to and settings of engagement. The study utilises a mix of discourse analysis and participant observation to engage with different features of each case. The outcome of this analysis is an exposition of the forms of publicness and the modes of politics that are summoned up, articulated, negotiated and enacted through the performance of these exercises. Comparing the three cases the thesis then develops two interrelated lines of argument. First, because of a set of tensions inscribed into the ideas of the public summoned up in each setting, the publics of these exercises are characterised as paradoxical publics. And, secondly, the mode of politics privileged across the three settings is characterised as spectacular and experimental. The findings of this research problematise the idea that large scale public participation exercises might somehow enact forms of politics that are more direct. The study also challenges the assumption that such practices might enable publics to act more authentically. Through a consideration of the relationships between a diverse, if limited, sample of contemporary large-scale public participation exercises this study instead contributes to the emerging politics of public mediation.