Policy Reports Workshop (Humanities & Social Sciences)

About the Workshop

Vina Nadjibulla and Kshitij (KJ) Sharan will lead an 80-minute hybrid workshop on policy reports and their use in policy communications and advocacy. Policy reports are used as a resource by stakeholders including policy makers, bureaucrats, non-profit professionals, policy advocates, and academics. We will discuss how to create and disseminate effective, inclusive and powerful policy reports. The workshop is open to students, faculty, and staff at UBC. This workshop will focus on policy reports for research in the 'humanities and social sciences'. A separate workshop will be held for the ‘sciences’.

This workshop is part of the Policy Communications Workshop series run by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC, in partnership with the Knowledge Exchange Unit, VPRI.

Topics will include:

• Writing for international organizations
• Policy reports vs academic articles
• Structure, formatting, and design
• Writing tips for policy impact

The Zoom link for those who registered online and workshop resources will be sent to the email address provided 1-2 days before the workshop.

Speaker Bios

Vina Nadjibulla

Vina Nadjibulla is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

As an international security specialist, Vina has over 20 years of professional experience in diplomacy, advocacy, policy making, and political risk analysis working with the United Nations and various non-profit organizations. Vina’s current research at UBC is focused on arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations, Canada-China bilateral relations and exploring Canadian policy options in the Indo-Pacific region in the context of growing US-China geopolitical competition.

Vina holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and is fluent in English, Russian and Farsi and speaks intermediate Mandarin Chinese. Born in the Soviet Union, raised in Afghanistan, and educated in the United States, Vina has also worked and lived in Kenya, Tajikistan and China.

Kshitij (KJ) Sharan

Kshitij Sharan is the Strategy and Operations Lead at the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) at UBC. He has a Masters in Public Policy and Global Affairs from UBC and a BA in Economics and Political Science from McGill University. His work has ranged across sectors of education, water and sanitation, menstrual hygiene, gender equity, child protection and social entrepreneurship. He has been a founding member of medium to large scale non-profits and social enterprises in India, which has allowed him to engage deeply with decision-makers including ministers, parliamentarians, CEOs and communities. He was a founding member of one of India’s largest digital advocacy organizations, Global Citizen India, which uses the collective voice of the youth to hold decisionmakers accountable and accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. Kshitij has also managed a political campaign during the 2019 Indian National Election and led strategy for an anti-trafficking organization in India. He is a Khemka Fellow, a StartingBloc School of Social Innovation Fellow and a Fellow at the Global Social Change Leadership Institute at the Wagner School of Public Service, New York University. For more, see https://www.linkedin.com/in/kshitij-sharan-229ab9104/.

CSDI Policy Communications Workshop Series

Policy intersects with almost every academic field. Many research or knowledge products can effect greater change if they are also communicated to non-academic audiences in the policy world. CSDI will manage and conduct an integrated series of six workshops across UBC to help students, faculty, and staff communicate their research effectively to stakeholders for policy change.

Do you ask yourself any of the following questions as a member of the academic community at UBC?

• How can my research create impact in the real world?
• My research is technical. How will I communicate to important stakeholders and decision-makers, including the general public, so that it is used constructively?
• How can I include policy communication in my grants?
• What are the best policy communications vehicles to reach people?
• Who can help me to write new genres and format them attractively?
• If YES, then the CSDI Policy Communications Workshop series is for you! The policy communications workshop series is a component of the CSDI Policy Communications Consulting Clinic (CPCC).

What is CPCC?

The CSDI Policy Communications Clinic is a service for the policy communications and policy impact needs of students, staff, and faculty at UBC. CPCC offers workshops and individualized consulting hours to help develop policy communications products.

Read more about CPCC here.

About the Organizers

What is CSDI?

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) is part of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). It aims to advance interdisciplinary publicly-engaged research, teaching, and dissemination of knowledge about innovation in democratic practice and institutions. CSDI leads and participates in projects at the local (BC), national (Canada), and international levels.

Our interdisciplinary work seeks to:

• Understand the past;
• Analyze the present;
• Train for the future.

Read more about CSDI here.

What is the Knowledge Exchange unit?

The UBC Knowledge Exchange team is part of the UBC Innovation Hub in the Vice President’s Office for Research and Innovation. We aim to build capacity among researchers, students and staff across disciplines to develop and share impactful knowledge through connections and exchange with communities, government, not-for-profit organizations and the general public.