Public Policy Challenge Fund

Carolyn Hoyle and Daniel Cullen (Faculty of Law), Matthew Goldberg (World Coalition Against the Death Penalty), and Parvais Jabbar (The Death Penalty Project) 

Between countries that have abolished the death penalty and those that still carry out executions lies a less visible group of 42 ‘abolitionist de facto’ (ADF) states, where executions are not currently carried out but the death penalty remains in law. Policymakers face a key challenge in engaging with these states: understanding the nature of ADF status and identifying the barriers that prevent progress to full abolition. 

Building on earlier research, this project will engage international policymakers through targeted events in Oxford, Geneva and at the World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris. Working with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, it aims to embed a new intellectual framework in policy debates, strengthen international engagement, and support concrete steps towards full abolition among ADF states. 

Richard Maude (Nuffield Department of Medicine) and Sarthak Das (Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance)

Malaria transmission has declined across the Asia-Pacific, yet it persists in border areas where people, parasites and mosquitoes cross freely, health systems and surveillance are weaker, and cross-country coordination is limited. These settings pose a major policy challenge to elimination. 

To address this challenge, a regional policy dialogue is being hosted by the partners to translate evidence into coordinated cross-border action. Building on collaboration with the WHO Global Malaria Program, the initiative will develop subregional recommendations based on broader regional recommendations and case studies informed by regional stakeholder interviews conducted in 2025. The dialogue will support discussions on practical steps for subregional and national adoption. It’s anticipated this will lead to more coordinated and inclusive approaches to border malaria control to reduce malaria transmission and prevent re-establishment. 

César Palacios-González (Uehiro Oxford Institute) and Patricio Javier Santillán Doherty (CONBIOETICA)

Mexico faces an urgent policy challenge arising from outdated organ transplantation legislation that no longer reflects modern scientific, medical and ethical realities. Gaps in regulation have led to inefficiencies and inequities in organ allocation. 

In partnership with Mexico’s National Bioethics Commission, this project will engage policymakers, patients, healthcare professionals, legal experts and bioethicists in a collaborative ethical and legislative review. Through accessible materials and evidence-based recommendations, it will identify regulatory gaps and propose reforms aligned with international best practice. Expected impacts include fairer, more transparent organ allocation, clearer governance, and better public and legislative understanding of emerging transplantation ethics. 

Linda Speight (School of Geography and the Environment) and Anita Asadullah (Environment Agency)

Flooding is a major and growing hazard in the UK yet a persistent policy challenge remains in closing the gap between research, policy and practice. 

Building on the UK Flood Hydrology Roadmap, this project will strengthen established partnerships to ensure decision-makers can access and use up-to-date hydrological science. Activities include documenting learning from recent workshops, sharing evidence of effective science–policy collaboration, and co-developing research proposals aligned with policy needs. By engaging funders and producing practical guidance, the project aims to strengthen national research–policy networks, shape future funding, and improve protection of people and places from flood risk. 

Kate Sullivan de Estrada (Department of Politics and International Relations) and the Indian Ocean Commission

The Indian Ocean is a major conduit for international trade and energy. However, they face multiple forms of maritime insecurity. 

Over the past decade the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) has developed a local maritime security architecture to monitor vessel movements and respond operationally to illicit activities - such as illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, drug trafficking and environmental damage - that devastate local communities. This architecture requires buy-in and resourcing from powerful economic, naval and technological actors, UN agencies and national governments, each with their own policy and security priorities. Buy-in therefore entails trade-offs: taking on policy commitments that serve extra-regional interests; accepting externally conceived projects; or importing geopolitical, inter-state or domestic tensions. The project sought to co-produce approaches to external buy-in for the IOC's maritime security architecture that make visible and reduce 'autonomy trade-offs'. It has mapped multiple perspectives on IOC activities and efficacy via interactions with sub- and international stakeholders.

Marina Korzenevica-Proud (School of Geography and the Environment) and UNICEF 

The policy challenge being addressed by this project is unsustainable engagement of communities in water supply projects, contributing to 30% of waterpoints being non-functional in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The current model of community-managed water is being slowly replaced by the professional model of water supply repairment. However, the perspective of community engagement remains unaddressed in both models. Following the SDG 6.1 to reach universal water by 2030, the team sought to redefine the role of communities and the responsibilities to end-users. The project also sought to encourage a policy and implementation shift towards a people-centred approach.

The project contributed to SDG 6.1 by shifting policy conversations towards more sustainable, ethical and inclusive approaches in community management of water supply projects.

Emily Jones (Blavatnik School of Government) and Greg Messenger (University of Bristol) and the Department for Business and Trade  

The UK faces a world in the midst of the climate crisis and the digital revolution, with profound implications for trade policy. 

Working in collaboration with the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT), and leveraging the expertise of the project leads and wider Trade and Public Policy (TaPP) Network they co-direct, Professors Emily Jones (Oxford) and Greg Messenger (Bristol) developed evidence and identified policy options to inform UK trade policy in the areas of climate and digital. It seeks to ensure that UK trade policy in these areas is evidence-based and reflects the public interest. The project provided concrete, specific, policy proposals and created opportunities for collaboration with government officials.

Elisa Sandoval Serés (Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Biology) and ZIMPARKS (Government of Zimbabwe) 

Hwange National Park (HNP) in Zimbabwe is one of the largest parks in Africa inside the world's largest transfrontier conservation area. HNP is a semi-arid savannah where in the dry season animals depend completely on artificial waterholes. The current water management system in HNP is an unplanned management intervention stemming from the need to supply dry season water, especially for elephants, to benefit the photographic tourism industry. Managing waterholes without proper planning can have implications on wildlife, tourism and local socio-economic development. Surface-water availability drives the distribution and abundance of herbivores (especially elephants), and in turn: carnivores' aggregation, plus distribution grazing/browsing pressure (which affects vegetation structure). Hence, water distribution can indirectly affect the conservation of endangered species, such as African wild dogs.

Currently, there is no national water management plan for artificial water provision in Zimbabwe. A scientific water management legal plan is a high-priority need. This project aimed to help wildlife conservation thrive in Zimbabwe through a scientific water management plan in protected areas that benefit wildlife, stakeholders and local communities. The project intends to: formalise a legal scientific-based water management plan with the collaboration of key stakeholders through a joint policy brief and encourage integration of the policy brief within ZIMPARKS and key stakeholders.

Ashwiny Kistnareddy (Refugee Studies Centre), and the Department of Education

The Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) team at the Department for Education (DfE) has observed that the increase in the number of UASC arriving in the UK in recent years has created a particular challenge for the team, especially given that the mandatory National Transfer Scheme means that UASC are increasingly less concentrated geographically.

The UASC team is keen to explore remote access as an option. Through observations, interviews, data capture and the collation of resources from organisations that have developed best practice, this project seeks to pool together the resources gleaned from a range of stakeholders within the UK to build a EdTech app, enabling remote access to resources for newly arrived children in different parts of the UK, as well as for the teachers and practitioners who work with them. Ultimately, the project identifies and brings together best practice and resources to be uploaded to a virtual portal or app and set up an accessible space. It has involved young people from the different partner organisations testing the app from the beginning to improve its effectiveness.

James Robson (Department of Education) and the Office for Students

Awarding gaps represent a significant regulatory policy challenge in higher education (HE). Awarding gaps are persistent differences in attainment between students with different characteristics, including socio-economic status, race, and disability. These differences in attainment shape graduate labour market outcomes and career trajectories and have the potential to entrench inequalities in society. Universities are introducing a range of interventions to address awarding gaps. However, the Office for Students (OfS), the regulator for HE, faces the policy challenge of designing approaches to evaluating these interventions that ensure they are really targeting the underpinning causes and are making a meaningful difference to graduate outcomes.

This project brings together an interdisciplinary team, led by researchers in the Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) in the University's Department of Education and the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) to work in partnership with the OfS to address this challenge. The collaboration aims to gain a better understanding the contributory causes of awarding gaps and develop new approaches to evaluation, with the aim of improving the quality and quantity of evaluations across the sector and embedding student voices in evaluation work. In a bid to address persistent inequalities, the project considers what indicators and evaluation approaches can be used to reduce the risk of inequitable outcomes for underrepresented students. It draws on Oxford researchers' expertise in different forms of evaluation, including participatory evaluation approaches that amplify student voices, and a range of creative methods.

Acting as a policy bridge, the project will co-create solutions with policy partners, co-designing guidance on interventions and innovative approaches to evaluation that will improve students' experiences and outcomes and meet the regulatory needs of the OfS. 

Mary Bosworth (Law Faculty) and the Greek Council for Refugees

 For a number of years, the Greek government has maintained a policy expecting immediate autonomy and self-sufficiency of persons granted international protection. This policy, in conjunction with chronic legal and practical barriers to access to basic rights in many cases results in homelessness and extreme deprivation contrary to the country's international obligations, as well as exclusion of refugees from the basic documents and socio-economic rights needed to rebuild their lives. 

The project's goal is to offer evidence-based alternatives to the prevalent polarised discourse on migration in Greece, by providing solid, research- and rights-based information about refugee integration. This information will be used to inform policy making (and public opinion) in a way that reflects the country's international responsibilities, its socioeconomic realities, and the untapped opportunities of integration.

In demonstrating the possibilities and benefits of integration, the project aims to not only challenge the current xenophobic attitudes and approaches to refugees and migrants, but to map out practical solutions.

Hannah Budnitz (Transport Studies Unit, School of Geography and the Environment) and Oxfordshire County Council

Electrification of road vehicles won't be enough to reduce transport's contribution to climate change in line with the UK's legal commitments. Reductions in travel demand and shifts to more sustainable modes are also required. A key policy challenge is to understand whether electric vehicle (EV)-sharing offers a viable and scalable means to reduce vehicle ownership and mileage in towns and villages, which often receive less attention, less funding, and have fewer transport options than metropolitan or other larger urban areas. 

This project addressed this challenge by collating evidence and enabling Oxfordshire County and its constituent District Councils, the researcher, car club and charge point operators, and community groups to come together and evaluate the electric car clubs being trialed in ten of Oxfordshire's market towns and villages over the previous 6-12 months. The project has showcased the partnership and the trial at numerous events and has promoted opportunities for electric car sharing and related research and innovation in policymaking in towns and villages across the country. You can find out more about Hannah's work on this project in this film, one in our series on Researchers Stories of policy engagement.