CTRL builds on over a decade of engagement and impact-oriented work conducted by senior academics at Newcastle Law School, who intend to take the connections they have made and the practice they have developed and enable further generations of researchers to achieve similar levels of engagement and impact in their own work.

Leadership

The Director and Deputy Director of CTRL are Dr. Sylvia de Mars and Professor Colin Murray. Both Dr de Mars and Prof Murray have extensive experience with engagement and impact, both in terms of making and managing connections for impact/engagement purposes and in creating impact/engagement-oriented content (such as policy papers, cartoons, briefing documents, websites, social media accounts, and so on).

They also have a combined 15 years of experience of working with Westminster Parliament, the Stormont Assembly, the Scottish Parliament as well as with UK government and devolved administrations. Both have also engaged directly with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and have produced commissioned reports for these institutions. Both have engaged in wider public education, having engaged with third sector bodies and with think tanks such as IIEA.

De Mars and Murray were responsible for two impact case studies each at Newcastle Law School, both of which were highly rated in the 2021 REF, and continue to engage with policy-making actors for the purposes of new impact case studies for REF 2029.  Their experiences in learning how to engage these non-academic audiences will inspire future generations (or something like that, but less cheesy).

While de Mars and Murray specialise in public sector engagement and impact, other senior colleagues at Newcastle have significant experience in both public and private sector engagement and impact.  Professor Ben Farrand works on the regulation of new technologies, and has engaged with the technology sector as well as various levels of government (UK, EU) as part of his research.  Dr Ilke Turkmendag works on the regulation of emerging medical technologies and biomedicinal developments more generally, and in the course of her research engages both with public and private medical and biomedical actors, ranging from regulators to pharmaceutical and biomedical companies to patients themselves.