As leading interdisciplinary researchers on the changing landscape of secret intelligence in the age of ‘Big Data’, Professor Richard Aldrich and Professor Christopher Moran have become the ‘go to’ authorities for a variety of national and international stakeholders.

In both governmental and non-governmental contexts, there has been a strong appetite to understand the drivers behind this challenging new environment, as well as demand for tailored advice on how to adapt. Building a network of high-level relationships, Aldrich and Moran have achieved policy impact by influencing the formulation of new working practices and legislation by UK Defence Intelligence and the German Parliament, resulting in greater openness and more robust formal oversight of intelligence by public bodies.

They have achieved capacity-building impact by shaping the training of national security practitioners in the US, Europe and Africa, leading to improved competencies around the importance of democratic control of secret agencies. They have also achieved cultural impact by changing the way that TV producers and museums represent intelligence to their audiences, resulting in more thought-provoking and accurate portrayals that improve public understanding and therefore cultivate informal oversight by a better-informed citizenry.

The ‘third wave’ of democratisation that spread across sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s was heralded as a moment of great optimism for fair, legitimate, and inclusive politics.

Since then, multi-party elections have been marred by excessive spending, corruption, and violence, and have fallen far short of democratic standards. In Kenya, violence following disputed elections has been commonplace, while elections across the region are associated with heightened fears of unrest. In this context, elections can deepen ethnic divisions, undermine socio-economic realities, and damage public trust in key institutions. Through longstanding research in Kenya and comparative insights from Ghana and Uganda, Lynch piloted Deep Election Monitoring (DEM) to better understand dynamics during electoral cycles and to help various stakeholders to detect malpractice and unrest at an earlier stage.

Developed in Kenya, but subsequently rolled out in other countries, DEM has helped stakeholders to better support credible elections. In 2019, in recognition of the ‘tangible difference’ her work had made ‘on the ground’ for policy-makers, civil society activists, and local media, Lynch and her colleagues won the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Award for ‘Outstanding International Impact’ and the Market Research Society’s President’s Medal for outstanding research with impact.

This same area of research has also underpinned community engagement work with the voluntary organisation Leamington History Group (LHG). Since 2020 Richardson has worked with the LHG to co-produce knowledge about the town’s global connections and enable conversations about its colonial past, chiefly through a series of regular walking tours that he has led on their behalf. Based on this work, the partners then curated an art exhibition at the local ArtsTrail gallery and co-edited a book called Global LeamingtonLink opens in a new window, coordinating submissions from local residents and school pupils, PAIS students, and the heritage sector. In his foreword, the MP for Warwick and Leamington Matt Western praised the book for its inclusive politics, providing “a different history about people moving here, integrating into the existing community and supporting others”. Most recently, Richardson's research was used to inform a historical exhibition entitled Leamington Spa and the Black AtlanticLink opens in a new window, hosted in the town's Pump Room museum.