Professor Joyce Liddle of  Policy&Practice was invited as a keynote speaker at Network: evaluating & researching university participation interventions conference in  London, September  2025.

The move towards increased collaboration and regional organisation for widening participation initiatives announced by the Office for Students in June 2025 opens up a range of opportunities for higher education. This new approach to partnerships could support a shared national purpose by coordinating the work of providers in tackling local and regional challenges to achieve a greater collective impact. The possibility of more productive links with employers and communities, support for collaborative work with younger age groups and enhanced careers provision would all be facilitated. But at times of change it is also vital that we recognise and learn from the success of existing partnerships.

The NERUPI Convention gave people the opportunity to:

• engage with wider perspectives on regional development
• increase understanding of Office for Students intentions and requirements
• consider ways to retain existing partnership activities
• explore strategies for developing new collaborative initiatives

Professor Joyce Liddle from Durham University provided a keynote talk that drew on her many years of experience and engagement as an academic and policy/practitioner in regional development.  Her speech was entitled “Setting widening participation, knowledge exchange and collaborative partnerships for place transformation in a civic and place leadership context for higher educations institutions: The UK Government’s ‘Going for Growth’ regional agenda”

She used the session to set widening participation, knowledge exchange and collaborative partnerships for place transformation in a context of civic and place leadership role for HEIs. In the evolving, highly fragmented devolutionary landscape of regional and local growth, mayoral combined authorities are expected to drive leadership in collaboration with other agencies, including higher education institutions.

Professor Joyce Liddle of Policy&Practice has recently published a new edited volume with Professor John Shutt of Northumbria University.

Cases on Public Sector Entrepreneurship examines the shifting political, economic and socio-technological forces that are altering public entrepreneurship contexts. Addressing the gaps in current methodological knowledge and combining theory and practice, this illuminating set of case studies provides integrated scholarship on business enterprise and public entrepreneurship.

The book presents an international perspective, including detailed case studies from the UK, France, Finland and Nepal. In so doing it acknowledges the difficulties in transferability between jurisdictions and cases, illustrating key elements of public entrepreneurship in different settings by exploring narratives, stories and ethnographic examples to enhance knowledge and policy learning on how public officials seek real word social and economic outcomes and impacts.

“We badly need more creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship in the public sector, particularly in an era of profound transitions, even though a truly, and fully entrepreneurial state would be unwelcome and dangerous. Part of the value of better research, and of this book, is to help us define and navigate the boundaries.”  Professor Geoff Mulgan

Joyce Liddle and John Shutt (2025) Cases in Public Entrepreneurship, Elgar Cases in Entrepreneurship Series, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.