About the Policy Hub

The Policy Hub was established in 2023 to better connect the academic community and policy community. It followed a series of engagements with senior public servants to explore how the academic community could provide helpful insights to support policymakers in realising evidence-based policymaking.

The goals, design principles, and activities of the Policy Hub reflect what we heard from policymakers in those conversations.

Our goals are to ensure:

• academic expertise is easily found when new policies are developed
• academic evidence underpins policy decisions on issues of national significance
• deep networks are built between the academic and the policy community
• investment is made in research on issues critical to New Zealand’s future.

Design principles

Design principles for the Policy Hub are that we:

• focus our efforts on key policy areas where there is mutually agreed demand for collaboration
• provide independent, multi-disciplinary academic analysis informed by te Tiriti o Waitangi
• work in a synergistic way with faculties across the University, as well as existing centres, institutes, and chairs
• connect across the whole of New Zealand’s academic community and with tertiary education institutions overseas
• engage early-career academics and emerging scholars—in particular Māori and Pasifika scholars within our community—in the processes to build trusted relationships between communities.

Key areas of research