The Corpus project stimulated closer interaction between researchers and policy-makers in order to streamline the flow of information. It developed an online knowledge hub dedicated to sustainable consumption and production aspects related to food, housing and mobility, and organised a string of workshops.  

“Corpus explored novel ways to bridge the gap between researchers and policy-makers in the area of sustainable consumption,” says project coordinator Gerd Scholl of the Institute for Ecological Economy Research in Germany. It used knowledge brokerage techniques to stimulate this interaction, testing new approaches in the process.

The power of information

Contacts between researchers and policy-makers provide useful input and fresh inspiration for both. To illustrate the need for such cooperation, Scholl points to the tricky issue of promoting more sustainable energy consumption in households.

Large-scale roll-out of smart meters in the coming years will provide consumers with a detailed breakdown of their energy use, enabling them to make informed decisions and potentially reduce their bills. However, says Scholl, this information alone is unlikely to affect consumption patterns significantly. “Social science tells us that people have their established laundry routines, lighting preferences and heating habits,” he notes.

Research, he says, can highlight ways of leveraging the data provided by the meters in order to promote actual change. “There is a plethora of research information out there, but it is too wide-ranging, too complex and too dispersed to be readily accessible to policy-makers. So having the right knowledge at the right time and in the right format is the challenge.”

The solution, according to Corpus, lies in knowledge brokerage, which Scholl defines as “targeted activity to facilitate interaction and exchange of information, experience and knowledge between different communities which would otherwise be less connected”.

Thinking ahead together

“Knowledge brokerage is precisely about providing access to the knowledge that is created in research, but it’s more than that,” Scholl explains. “It’s not a one-directional translation of scientific knowledge into the policy sphere. It’s also about creating a dialogue to help researchers design their projects for greater relevance to policy-making and enabling them to package their findings in a way that is more directly exploitable for policy-makers.”

Corpus undertook two main types of brokerage activity: the development of a web-based knowledge hub and organisation of a series of workshops. The knowledge hub focuses on sustainable consumption research relevant to food, housing and mobility.

The workshops covered various aspects of these three topics, enabling researchers and policy-makers to exchange views and develop new or closer ties. In addition to tried-and-tested methods including presentations and poster sessions, they explored more interactive forms of communication, such as collaborative scenario-building and mapping exercises translating various perceptions of individual issues. “We have created a community,” Scholl reports.

The project, which ended in January 2013, also added to the team’s experience with knowledge brokerage activities and methodology. Building on these insights, Scholl is pursuing his research on better ways to organise the science-policy interface.