Jonathan Breckon has been Director of the Alliance for Useful Evidence since it was created at Nesta in 2012. Formerly Director of Policy and Public Affairs at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, he has had policy roles at the Royal Geographical Society, the British Academy, and Universities UK. He is a member of the Cabinet Office What Works Council and a Director of the Department for Education’s What Works for Children’s Social Care.
His research and professional interests cover politics and psychology, particularly the ever-awkward relationship between evidence and policy-making. He is a Visiting Professor at Strathclyde University and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London’s Policy Institute. When not at work, or being ordered around by two young children, he wastes time protecting his family’s veg garden from slugs, or finding excuses to go sailing in the Solent.
Following the signing of the 2017 Evidence Declaration, this report examines the role of the royal colleges, faculties and other professional bodies in mobilising evidence.
As Brexit sucks all the oxygen out of British government, it’s easy to miss an important success story. The UK has set up ten What Works Centres (WWCs) to orchestrate the best evidence for frontline professionals...
People are hacked off with politicians. Whether it’s hurling abuse at MPs outside the House of Commons, or the burning barricades of Gilets Jaunes in Toulouse, discontent is in the air. The evidence movement must respond...
A growing wariness between what is fact and what is fiction in recent years has been highlighted by increased political polarisation, a fractured media and the accelerated pace of technological change. The Evidence Initiative, the recently launched...
Jonathan Breckon provides a guide to the Results First Clearinghouse Database, which brings together the evidence base for over 2,500 US programmes. Could it provide a model for something similar in the UK? Earlier this summer,...
At the Alliance we have been arguing for ages that the evidence community needs to learn more about the use of research by policymakers and professionals. What exactly helps people to use evidence? We need more...
Away from the despairing talk of ‘post-truth politics’, governments in countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada and France have been setting up important new institutions whose job is to reinforce evidence, and indeed truth, in...
Greg Wilkinson (Traversum) and Jonathan Breckon (Alliance for Useful Evidence) on the development of a new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care. At the National Children and Adult Services conference in Bournemouth this morning, the...
So the temptation is just to plough on. Keep calm, ignore the Trump and Brexit tumults, and carry on proselytising for evidence. Perhaps eventually things will calm down. But they won’t. Whatever you think about the...
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