To see what happens with emailing this through to people.
New job! I’m now a Y-PERN fellow, officially based in the Management School at Sheffield University, but mostly working with the South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority (SYMCA, pronounced by folk who work there as ‘sim-ka’).
Y-PERN (“Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network”) is a pretty unique project – Research England funded it specifically to strengthen the glue between Yorkshire and Humber’s universities and its local and mayoral authorities, building on a memorandum of understanding between them. The project itself doesn’t have traditional academic research questions or output requirements; the glue-strengthening is the whole point.
I’m one of eight (soon to be 11) policy fellows, and we’re kind of the glue, embedded in various local government bodies in Yorkshire and Humber. I’m regularly in SYMCA’s Sheffield office, working with them on specific projects. That experience has been fantastic – the level of daily collaboration is high. As one of the other fellows said, “The policy environment changes massively faster than academia,” making for a very different structure and pace. And SYMCA is full of incredibly smart and dedicated people – I’m feeling blessed to have a chance to work with them.
I’ve actually been in Y-PERN / SYMCA for several months, but only part time as I prototyped my way to a new work outcome, mixed with a few other freelance data science bits and bobs. But now that I’m fully Y-PERN, and getting stuck into some intense spatial economics goodness, it’ll be great to write/think about it all.
English Devolution (which will soon cover more than half of the English economy) is kindling a resurgence in fundamental economic and social questions, grounded in the places we live, asking how we can change those places for the better. To quote SYMCA’s Strategic Economic Plan (PDF):
We want to build a better economy, higher value and higher tech, more directly linked to the wellbeing of our population and planet, where people are more engaged and empowered to share in the fruits of their labour.