Mr Robin Vanner Policy & Partnerships Manager, University of Essex
- rv22380@essex.ac.uk
- Office
- 2N2.5A.06
Robin Vanner is the Policy and Partnership Manager at Understanding Society (Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex), a role focused on developing strategic partnerships with non-academic stakeholders to ensure that policy is informed by robust, longitudinal evidence. Since joining in 2022, Robin has significantly enhanced Understanding Society’s policy impact by spearheading a comprehensive portfolio of policy-engaged research initiatives. Most prominently, he has developed and delivered the Research Springboard series of workshops—an innovative co-production model that brings together researchers, analysts, and practitioners from academic and non-academic sectors to tackle complex policy challenges collaboratively.
Robin has also organized major policy conferences and roundtable events, work that led to his authoring multiple high-impact briefing papers that develop actionable policy insights. His 2024 briefing on Women Work & Health, produced in partnership with King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and supported by the British Academy, examined how work conditions and health interact, with particular emphasis on extending healthy working lives and reducing gender health inequalities. A central policy mission within this has been using Understanding Society to understand how to better support the health and productivity of the UK workforce, evaluate the effectiveness of existing policy and look towards better, more prevention-oriented policy.
Before joining Understanding Society, Robin spent nearly two decades in environmental policy research, including nearly five years as Senior Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute in London, where he developed influential policy at UK and EU levels on resource economics, wellbeing, and the circular economy.