 Okay, hello everyone. Thanks very much for tuning in. I'm super pleased to be joined by Max from Pro Bono Economics and Andy from the Center for Progressive Policy and Katie Key from the Institute for Government. And in this session, we are going to tell you a little bit about what we do and what sort of a typical day at work looks like for us. And each of us is going to give a really brief intro about ourselves and our work, and then we will have time for questions. So I would encourage you to pop your questions in the chat box in the Q&A. If you would prefer, you could also raise your hand and then we can call in you and get you unmuted to ask your question yourself. Okay, so I'm just going to start. My name is Isabel. I am a research economist at the Institute for Physical Studies. I'm originally from Germany and I came to the UK in 2015. I studied economics and maths originally and then continued with economics when I came to Bristol and I started at the IFS in London in 2019, a year and a half ago. And then I split my time there between work on the health sector and work on the public finances. And sort of the kinds of things I do is a lot of it is obviously producing the research itself. So we usually work in small teams of two or three people. And that involves a lot of data work, a lot of discussion, trying to figure out how best to estimate the size of an effect and things like that. So communication, so giving presentations, writing articles, writing tweets, doing videos, all sorts of different formats and a lot of trying to engage with policymakers, stakeholders. So that might be for work on the health sector, for example, talking to the Royal College of Nursing or things like that. And then one thing I also really enjoy is that we also get to spend quite a lot of time sort of continuing to learn and to engage with research. And so we do seminars and we do reading groups and try to keep up with the literature and discuss about other people's research and get to spend time on that, which is fun. So, yeah, I will hand over to Max, who will tell us about his work. Yes, so I'm Max, my background is in academia. I spent the past few years completing a PhD in musicology and African studies for which I carried out research and taught undergraduates about hip hop and racial inequality. And I joined pro bono economics as a researcher in September last year. So pro bono economics is a charity that specializes in the social sector. So we use economics to empower the social sector, and to increase while being across the UK. And in doing so we combine project work with individual charities and social enterprises with policy research that can drive systemic change. So as a researcher, my responsibility is set on that second element, conducting research designed to inform government policy and drive change. And I carry out these responsibilities as part of a research team, further comprising a research and policy director, a senior research and policy analyst, and a research and policy analyst. So currently my team is working on the law family commission on civil society, a two year research program into how we can unleash the full potential of the UK civil society. So for the project I'm currently working on my day might involve attending meetings with other researchers, academics and civil servants, attended events and webinars, planning projects and reports conducting literature reviews, analyzing data, writing reports, helping to organize events and organizing media communications with the external best team. So as Isabel said a couple of times a week, you know, I'll try and carve out some time for training you're having just come out of 10 years, working in the humanities, I'm still pretty new to this style of research. So I'm currently taking a couple of courses online, one on statistics and another on data analysis using the programming language up. And ultimately I'm trying to both develop my knowledge of the social sector and my quantitative research skills while contributing to original research into unleashing the potential of civil society. Okay, thanks a lot. And so we will continue with Andy. Yeah, thanks very much. Hi everyone. I'm going to be very quick so that we have plenty of time for questions at the end. I work for an organization called Center for Progressive Policy. So a little bit about us, we're an economics think tank. And our big thing is that we want to see inclusive growth in the UK. And that means maximizing the number of people we can contribute to and benefit from economic growth. We're quite young, and we're quite small, there's about 10 of us on any given day. We've been in between two or three years, so I'm quite new to the whole economics think tank arena, but we're nonpartisan which means we work with all the different political parties, and that's both at a national and the local level. And my role is, I'm a research analyst, which in some ways is exactly how it sounds. I research things and then I analyze them afterwards. At the moment I am looking at the relationship between skill levels and employment levels and how that varies across the country. But the job's actually quite a bit more than this. I also have to come up with ideas based on this research and analysis for how to make the country a better place, which is exactly as hard as it sounds. And so my days are pretty varied really sometimes I'm doing the research side of things at my desk or writing up that research but there's also a lot of communicating our research and ideas to other people. Whether they're politicians or policymakers or people who work in the industries that we're doing analysis on. So there's a lot of variety, a lot of time at my desk but also a lot of time when there isn't a global pandemic out and about meeting politicians and policymakers. I'm going to stop there so we have time for questions but I'm pretty easy to find on the internet if you want to come and talk to me directly and ask some questions there or hit. Thanks very much. Okay, thanks a lot. And finally we'll hear from Katie. Hi, my name is Katie. And I work at the Institute for government. I think tank working to make UK government more effective. We have a wide variety of work streams conducting research and everything from Brexit to COVID response parliament devolution and more. I joined the Institute a year and a half ago as a research assistant just after I finished my undergraduate degree which was in philosophy and politics. I worked on the data team making charts that visualise general election results and government reshuffles and writing a chapter of the Institute's annual report which looks at the performance of government. I also worked on the ministers team focusing on the changing role of special advisors and running the ministers reflect project, which is an oral history project of former ministers talking about their time in government. I've been an assistant for a year and I now work to set up events and the Institute's learning and development programs on how to engage with policymakers, which we deliver to diplomats and academics. So as a researcher, you're typically involved in a diverse range of outputs each day on a typical day you might spend some time organising or hosting an event or panel or speaking on a panel yourself. You could be writing an explainer explaining an aspect of UK government, for example the role of the opposition or the cabinet secretary. You might be visualising data from a recent government data release or reshuffle and you could tweet that chart out or include it in a publication. You might be writing a comment piece in response to a major policy announcement, for example, quarantine hotels or the net zero target. And you'd usually also be working on a long form paper conducting research interviews with people or drafting chapters. I think our work is very collaborative teams work very closely to write papers and articles and collate data together. And there's a lot of teamwork involved in your role. In addition, researchers are experts in that field thinking a lot about their area of focus brainstorming future research areas and speaking on panels and to the media about their issue to help inform public policy and discussion. I think that's one of the best things about being a researcher at a think tank, you really get to influence government and public discussion and have a powerful expert voice with which to advocate more effective governance and policy that works better for people. Okay, great. Thanks very much everyone. That was super interesting and thanks to everyone who has put questions in the Q&A. So, let's dive right in. So, for example, Ruka is asking how much on the ground or hands on work do you get to do do you feel like your work is a bit removed from the people or subjects that you conduct research on. How about Max, do you have any thoughts on that. Yeah, I think that we, I think that we strive and strive to ensure that our work isn't removed from the, and to ensure that our work is, in a sense, you know, collaborative and maybe work with groups rather than always on groups but I think that the approaches that we take to ensuring that our work doesn't doesn't feel so removed right so in designing research programs we might do some consultation for example in my case with social sector organizations, or if for example at some point we're doing quantitative research, which might appear a little bit more removed and we might balance that by doing some more sort of quality of quality of research such as focus groups or interviews right which allow us to be in a little bit more dialogue with the organizations, you know, yeah, that we're conducting research with. So, you know, I'm still pretty new to my job so I'll be yeah I'm sort of yet to see that but that's my sense is that there's a goal to be engaged and not do that. Thanks. And we had a couple of questions that were sort of in a similar vein. So Joe asked, do research projects pick themselves or can researchers get creative on what they research and Robert asked how much agency do you have to pick research topics that interest you. Do Andy or Katie have anything to share on that how how do you pick your or get picked by your research topics. Do you want to go ahead. You go first. Okay. We're actually very lucky at CPP because we have long term funding from one very nice funder, which means that we don't have to get individual research projects funded, which means to a certain degree we get to kind of pick what we want to do. And often I'll, my boss will say, Andy, what are you going to do next in this big region, come to me with a, what you think is interesting and, and then if it is indeed interesting worth doing and then we can do that so it's a pretty large degree I'd say that I have a pretty good autonomy over the things that I want to do research on, you know, within reason I can't just kind of be like, well I want to look at how man united are going to win the league in the next five years and I think my boss will allow that but you know within reason. Yeah, it's a similar situation at the Institute for government where sort of within our broad work streams you have quite a lot of freedom about what you do so a lot of our work responds pretty directly to things happening so we have since the COVID crisis we started a whole raft of work on COVID. And as a researcher you have a lot of scope to if you want to write in explain our school about something or if you want to host an event about a specific issue. I think it's great to bring those things up. I think it's more about. If you want to have a whole long term project about something else I think that would require a bigger discussion throughout the Institute but there's definitely a lot of flexibility to do a lot of responsive work and the things that you care about. I can add that at the IFS. We don't have an endowment so we do have to apply for funding for individual project. But I think that can actually sometimes be a good thing because you get lots of feedback, you sort of have to be strategic about who's going to be interested and really think about what exactly you're going to do when you're accountable to someone. So in some ways I think it can make me a better researcher to be thinking about that early on. So I guess pros and cons to every approach. We have also a bunch of questions about recruitment and sort of the kinds of skills that employers are looking for. So Mohammed is asking is recruitment based on the research capabilities of the candidates. Applicants to entry roles have to possess and show research capabilities or publications and Emma is asking what kind of experience other than trying to secure an internship at the think tank where you're looking to work. Our employer is going to be looking for these takers. So I'd say that getting research experience broadly defined is the best thing you can do. I wouldn't focus so much on getting publications under your name necessarily but if you did research for an NGO or local politician or university department or you vote for a student publication. Anything that just shows that you're getting involved in researching and thinking about the issues that you care about can be really valuable experience for a entry level role. You know, go for the topics that you care about whether that's climate policy or health policy socially inequality and try and get your hands on experience working for an organization related to those things or doing research or volunteering and just building your sort of broad capabilities. Any other thoughts from Max Randy on what employers are looking for what kind of background. Someone asked, do you need to have a PhD to work at a think tank and I think the answer is clearly no since some of us don't. But more broadly what kinds of qualifications and experiences are people looking for. Yeah, I don't have a PhD so hopefully I'm living proof that you don't need one to do to work for a think tank but I've, I've run the recruitment rounds for our internship for the last few years so I'd say that the kind of number one first thing you should do if you're applying for entry level to a think tank is to make it very clear that you're particularly interested in this exact role at this exact think tank the amount of cover letters that I've read that are clearly just sort of copied and pasted from the last application and people haven't thought about exactly why they want to work for us. So I think this role, you know, 75% of applications you can kind of throw out for that so anything you can, you can do to show that you're genuinely interested in, in these topics in these roles, and we'll set you apart right from the start, I'd say. Thank you. And so we also have some questions about what is what's great about our work. Joe asked what do you enjoy most about your work and Alican sorry for mispronouncing possibly. Do you have a favorite moment or achievement that stands out that help you confirm that your current position is the one you really enjoy or is a good fit. Any thoughts on that. Yeah, I would say, and you know I saw another question in the Q&A about the gap between academia and think tank work. And I think that what's really interesting to me and enjoyable to me about working for program economics is the chance to sort of explore a new bunch of skills you know I came into this with very little quantitative research experience and so some of my favorite moments so far have just been aged training and learning new learning new skills in things like stats and data analysis and getting the chance to explore datasets that I would never have thought to look at before and also the idea that I'm doing that in some sort of very driven and directed way towards a sort of policy goal or research outcome that's somewhat short term and feels very directed which feels a little bit different to academia where the research cycles can be a little bit longer and maybe feel a little bit less good towards a tangible social outcome. Yeah, I'd echo quite a lot of that. I think my favorite thing about the job is being able to share the research with people who can actually make a difference with it. And my favorite moment as a think tank was I was invited to Parliament to present a report that I'd written alongside a group of MPs and one of the MPs introduced me as the guy who did all the donkey work on the report. And after the presentation, the former Prime Minister of Bhutan came up to me and said you're a very good donkey. That isn't a good reason to work in a think tank. I don't know what is. Okay, that's it. That's a great anecdote I love that. As a final question perhaps we had two questions about people who change careers or people who are not fresh out of uni who join later in life. Any thoughts about how common that is or how to help how you can achieve that. I can't really comment on how common it is. The main way in the way in that I followed was, you know, get a degree doing internship and come in that way but that's not to say that. That's the only way and certainly at CPP, we would, we would definitely be open to people who have had a career outside of think tankery to come in and sort of tell us how the real world actually works. So I think you've got a lot going for you if you've had a career outside of think tanks and then want to come in if that's the route that you see. Okay, yeah, we certainly at FS have people who came from sort of more consulting backgrounds or public sector backgrounds or private sector backgrounds too. So there's sort of a variety of experience in addition to people coming right out of uni. I have been told to be strict about time so although we have lots of interesting questions left, I'm going to have to wrap up. There will be a an FAQ document sent round with questions from our session and other sessions as well. So if you didn't manage to get the question answered and keep an eye out for that. Thank you very much to everyone who came along and thanks very much to our panelists. And I hope that many of the attendees will be inspired to apply for internships or for entry roles in think tanks. And I look forward to seeing what what you all do when you join us. Thank you very much. Thanks everyone. Thanks.