NCIA Policy Roundtable Series

This series brings together three NCIA roundtable summary reports from 2025 – and an overall synthesis providing lessons from policy leaders, practitioners, and local partners – illuminating how civic universities across the UK support evidence-informed policy, regional devolution, and collaborative community infrastructure.

This work highlights the crucial but financially vulnerable position civic universities hold as anchor institutions in their places, and how incentives and disincentives drive civic choices in the university sector.

Key themes include the emergence of Civic University Agreements, the power of place-based collaboration, the challenges of fragmented funding and policy, and ideas for building stronger, mutual partnerships between universities, local authorities, and government.

• Enabling Civic Research to Support Policy Makers | Roundtable Discussion Summary Note
• How Civic Universities Can Support Devolution in England | Roundtable Discussion Summary Note
• High Hopes, Hard Realities: Civic Universities at the Cross Roads | Roundtable Discussion Summary Note
• Strengthening the Civic University – Policy Partnership | A Synthesis of the NCIA Policy Roundtable Series