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>> The university, a modern multi-faculty university, should
be addressing broad issues of policy relevance to us all.
>> Grand Challenges is a very interesting initiative,
it's not a kind of grand plan coming down from the top,
it really is an attempt to embed the idea
of interdisciplinary conversations
within the university more widely.
>> It's been an absolute revelation to me to be able
to get links into other faculties and to start talking
with people from very different backgrounds, to bring new ideas
to how to solve problems.
>> The first thing we did on a multi-faculty basis
in Global Health was to do a report
on managing the health effects of climate change.
We were asked by the editor of The Lancet to do
that because he wanted the perspective
of many different faculties in a report.
So we had the professor of philosophy, economists,
anthropologists, students, lawyers, and the report
that we ended up with was very different
from what I would have expected
if it had been led by 'health people'.
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>> I'm based in the Bartlett School of Planning
and colleagues here have a long tradition
of engaging policy makers, at central government
and at local government levels,
over a variety of planning topics.
For myself, personally, I suppose the main activity
where I've engaged strongly
with central government policy makers has been
in a government foresight report
on sustainable energy management and the built environment.
That was very interesting because it was an attempt
to look at the ways in which we can achieve sustainable energy
solutions at the urban level and it involved a huge range
of engagement with different government departments,
getting them really to think
through what the implications would be of that issue.
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>> UCL is actually making a strategic effort
as an institution to engage with policy makers to make it clearer
that the messages from all the research we're doing
are framed in a way that can get across to policy and I think
that can only lead to
better public policy in the longer run.
>> Until recently, quangos had done a lot of the research
for policy makers in ministries.
With the desire to reduce the number of quangos,
I think universities have a very important role to step
into their shoes, firstly
because I think they bring more rigour to the measurement
of impact of policies,
and secondly because I think the multi-faculty approach can
really open new policy options for government.
With universities like UCL saying to policy makers, look,
we want to help you, we want to do more to help you,
I think there's going to be closer relationships
and I think there's -- we're just at the beginning of this.
I think we're -- there's a whole lot more we could be doing.
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