Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
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Why Evidence Matters: Key take-aways from Evidence Week 2025
On Monday 3rd November 2025, we travelled to London to take part in Evidence Week, held at UK Parliament. Now in its eighth year, Evidence Week is run by Sense About Science, an independent charity that promotes the public interest in sound science and evidence.
Evidence Week brings together the public, researchers and parliamentarians to discuss how evidence is used and scrutinised at Westminster. It also provides a unique opportunity for researchers to construct and deliver policy briefings based on their research findings, with the event providing a forum to showcase their work and lobby for policy change.
Juliet and Lewis at Evidence Week
Day one opened with a reverse select committee hearing, where members of the public had the opportunity to put their questions to a number of Parliamentary Select committees. The session was split into themes, which included: Our Society and Economy; Science, Energy and the Environment, and Community and Infrastructure, which demonstrates great alignment with Leeds Beckett's own research themes. It included a variety of questions, ranging from 'How do we assess the value of our trade agreements', to 'How to measure and monitor the impact of smartphones on children's mental health', so really spoke to the breadth of public interest in the policy process.
Lewis and Juliet speaking to Leeds MP Fabian Hamilton. Image by James Gifford Mead
On day two, we had the opportunity to present Lewis' research to Members of Parliament, who had expressed an interest in Lewis' work, including Fabian Hamilton, MP for Leeds North East, Liz Twist, MP for Blaydon and Consett, and The Lord Farmer, member of The House of Lords.
Lewis and Juliet speaking to Leeds MP Liz Twist. Image by James Gifford Mead
We took along copies of the policy brief that we had worked with Sense About Science to produce, and were able to get into in-depth discussions with people working at the coal face of prisons policy, so the experience was incredibly eye-opening and presented some fantastic opportunities for future collaboration between research and policy.
Lewis with Lord Farmer
Lewis also had the opportunity to produce a three-minute video summarising his work, which was made available after Evidence week had closed, so we hope to be able to utilise this great resource to keep up the momentum over the coming weeks.
Value-based metrics in prison
We have already had two responses from MPs that we spoke with on the day, so we will be tracking the progress of our engagement activity with interest.
As someone who works centrally across Leeds Beckett University, the experience has given me lots of food for thought, and I'm already considering what else we can do to better support researchers who are active in the policy engagement space and identify further routes for collaboration.
This opportunity has helped shape and understand the challenges faced with getting my research findings in front of politicians and policymakers, and I feel the experience has helped me gain skills at translating academic research to parliamentarians - something that I plan on developing within students and helping follow researchers with.
We are going to be running two training sessions for staff over the next few months, where we will talk through our experiences and learnings from Evidence week in more detail, so would encourage anyone who would like to hear more to sign up here:
Writing for Policymakers on Tuesday 27 January 2026, 11:00-13:00 (online)
Engaging Policymakers with your Research (Early Career Rsearcher Network session), Wednesday 22 April, 2026, 12:00-13:00 (in person)
Juliet Harrison
Research Impact & Policy Engagement Manager, covering the whole of Leeds Beckett University.
Dr Lewis Simpson
Lewis is interested in thinking sociologically around a number of criminology topics, particularly around prisons management and experiences. This has led to his current research focusing on the use of prison inspection in English and Wales.
