‘Expert in Residency’ program at UCD to promote excellence in policy making

5 February 2025

_{Professor Kate Robson Brown, UCD Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact, with Professor Michelle Norris, Director of the Geary Institute for Public Policy, and Bob Jordan, Geary Expert in Residency and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Credit: Veronica Aguilar Olmos}

One of the most influential figures in the Irish housing sector, Bob Jordan, former CEO of The Housing Agency, has joined the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy as its first expert in residency.

As part of a new flagship programme designed to build stronger links between policy makers and promote innovation and excellence in policy making, Geary has established the Policy and Practice Expert Reflections (PAPERs) series which gives industry experts the opportunity to spend a three-month period at the Institute.

Available to those from the Irish civil and public service and relevant non-governmental and commercial organisations, the new ‘expert in residency’ scheme aims to provide policy makers and practitioners an opportunity to write a 5,000 to 10,000-word reflection on a particularly critical and challenging policy and/or practical barrier they faced in their career.

A highly regarded housing specialist with over 20 years’ experience addressing the complex needs of the sector, from 2021 to 2024 Mr Jordan led the Housing Agency, the organisation responsible for the delivery of government housing policy.

A former chief executive of the Threshold housing charity and a one-time special advisor to then Minister for Housing Simon Coveney between 2016 and 2017, Mr Jordan as CEO of the Housing Agency worked with the department, local authorities and sectoral bodies to support housing supply and policy development.

"I’m most grateful to the UCD Geary Institute for this opportunity to apply a systems thinking approach to the complex challenge of homelessness," said Mr Jordan, an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at UCD.

"Tackling this issue requires understanding how structural, institutional, and individual factors interact and finding new ways to address them. The Expert in Residency programme is an excellent example of how collaboration between researchers and policy makers can inspire fresh ideas and real change.

"By working together, we can explore ways to design and implement policies that lead to improved, sustainable outcomes for those most in need," added Mr Jordan.

The residency programme is part of a wider initiative at Geary called Empowering Policy Excellence (EPEx), which intends to enable policy makers in Ireland, other European countries and international organisations, to achieve excellence in policymaking, implementation and evaluation.

This will be achieved through a combination of strengthening relationships, building research impact capacity and providing educational programmes from micro-credential to doctoral level.

Those undertaking the residency programme for example, will attend seminars and training programmes at UCD, have access to the library, research software and online resources, and network with its faculty.

This is to enable these experts to gain new skills and knowledge, and, in turn, present UCD researchers’ opportunities to strengthen their links with policy makers and practitioners, which would help to maximise the impact of their research.

“We hope the expert residency programme will give policy makers and practitioners the opportunity to take a break from ‘thinking fast’ about rapid responses to the most pressing political priorities, and instead allow them the time to ‘think slow’ and devise new and innovative responses which haven’t been proposed before and more comprehensive solutions to key societal challenges," said (opens in a new window)Michelle Norris, Director of the Geary Institute and full Professor of Social Policy at the UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice.

"In this way the expert residency programme and policy and practice expert reflections series will help to promote innovation in our policy system and also enable more collaboration between academic researchers and policy makers."

EPEx builds on several initiatives already underway in UCD, particularly at Geary, but will significantly expand and integrate a number of core actions to construct an innovative, multifaceted, coherent, and comprehensive programme to empower policy excellence.

Among these will be significantly expanding the suite of impact supports currently available to Geary Institute members, including more training, advice, and information events, to maximise strategies for research grant applications.

Also expanded will be the international programme enabling experts from policy institutes in highly ranked universities abroad to spend a period at the Geary Institute, helping to support further collaboration on research grant applications and other activities.

The Institute also plans to partner with the Irish Civil Service Research Network to develop a monthly EPEx webinar series in which an international researcher or policy maker will present research on policy making, implementation and evaluation innovations internationally, and a member of the Civil Service Research Network will respond on the relevance of these reforms for Ireland.

These webinars are intended to feed new ideas into the Irish policy making infrastructure, inspire innovation, and potentially lead to the development of masterclasses and summer/ winter schools and into a programme of micro-credentials in policy making, implementation and evaluation. 

By: David Kearns, Digital Journalist / Media Officer, UCD University Relations

To contact the UCD News & Content Team, email: newsdesk@ucd.ie