Last week, an exciting new initiative launched to build the UK's national capacity in behavioural science across sectors, and to push innovation globally. Backed with £17m ESRC: Economic and Social Research Council funding, Behavioural Research UK will build a leadership hub and Centre-UB will support skills development.
Some of my take-aways from the launch event:
🧠 Context and Systems: there was a welcome emphasis on the fact that behaviour is complex, usually part of/emergent from multiple systems and that context is key to understanding it. (AKA a one-off nudge is not often the answer to sustainable behaviour change)
🧠Modelling the future: the emerging power of using ontologies to explain behaviours, contexts, interventions and other aspects open up untold opportunities to harness machine learning to uncover patterns, make predictions and model future scenarios.
🧠Nothing about us without us: communities, especially under-represented communities, should be part of co-producing solutions. Hopefully this goes beyond a 'citizen jury' and utilises the full range of participatory research approaches. To my mind, this is both a matter of values and ethics, and also crucial to achieving trust and credibility.
🧠 Settled science: In a fast-moving research environment, policymakers need to know which knowledge is likely to be 'fixed' and what is still evolving fast so they can implement with confidence.
I'm looking forward to seeing the capability map that Jo Davan Wetton (Hale) is leading, and other developments as the project grows.
(Recording of the launch event available below from BRUK)
Thank you to everyone who joined our launch this morning to learn more about us. If you weren't able to make it we will be able to share a recording with you in due course. In the meantime, please do keep a look out on this page for updates on our research, recruitments and ways of getting involved to help us realise our vision. You can find out website (which is under development) here: https://t.co/4zjkbxMUOQ.