Research England has selected 21 English universities to take part in a pilot Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF), which will run between February and May 2019. The pilot exercise will feed into a raft of evidence, including from a consultation, on how the KEF will operate in England. Research England said that they received an extremely high response rate to a January 2019 call for expressions of interest to take part in the pilot exercise, with interest expressed from every proposed KEF cluster across England. To reflect this exceptional level of interest, Research England increased the pilot group from a previously published size of between 12 and 16 institutions to 21 institutions; a move that was widely welcomed, including by PraxisAuril.
The 21 universities selected are drawn from all of the proposed KEF clusters and represent a diverse range of English higher education institutions (HEIs), with a good geographical cross-section of institutions from across the country. All but three of the pilot HEIs are PraxisAuril members. The list in full is:
Cluster E - Coventry University, University of Plymouth, University of the West of England, Manchester Metropolitan University
Cluster X - London School of Economics and Political Science, Lancaster University,University of Essex
Cluster J - Teesside University, University of Worcester
Cluster M - Solent University, Southampton; Cumbria University
Cluster V - Imperial College London, University of Southampton, University of Oxford, University of Sheffield
Arts specialists - University of the Arts London, Arts University Bournemouth, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Social Science and Business (SSB) specialists - Bishop Grosseteste University
Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) specialists - Cranfield University, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine