Advocacy for Sustainable Research¶

Project team¶

Kirsty Pringle, Lorna Smith, Erinma Ochu, Greg Wilson

About this Workbook¶

Much of the material in this course material is based on Greg Wilson's course on organisational change.

The page and repo structure is based on that of Teaching for Impact developed by Anelda Van der Walt and Sheena O'Connell.

Funding¶

The training and development of this workbook and associated resources were funded through the NetDRIVE project.

Course Structure¶

Introduction — What advocacy is, how it connects to organisational change, and the five-step framework that structures the course
Section 1: Understand the Issue — The policy landscape for environmental sustainability in research, including the Concordat and UKRI strategy, and how to use institutional commitments as advocacy leverage
Section 2: People, Power and Stakeholders — How power actually works in research institutions, and how to map stakeholders, build personas, and choose who to approach first
Section 3: Develop a Plan — How to set clear goals, frame your message for different audiences, and build a theory of change
Section 4: Implement Your Plan — How to build coalitions, navigate institutional politics, handle resistance, and close the deal
Section 5: Follow Up and Evaluate — How to hold decision-makers accountable, evaluate what worked, and sustain your advocacy over time

The Course¶

This course is designed primarily as a facilitated one-day workshop, but all the material is also available for self-directed study.

The workshop uses slides to guide participants through each section, with activities and discussion built in throughout. The website contains the same content as the slides, plus extended background reading for those who want to go deeper. You do not need to have attended a workshop to use the site — everything you need is here.

If you are using this as self-directed study, we recommend working through the sections in order and completing the activities as you go. The background reading sections — The Need for Change and The Power of Stories — provide additional context that goes beyond what is covered in the taught session.

Tip

Use the activities throughout the workbook to develop your own materials as you progress.

Re-using, Remixing, Reproducing¶

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Citation¶

If you use or adapt this workbook, please cite it as:

Pringle, K., Smith, L., Ochu, E. & Wilson, G. (2026). Advocacy for Sustainable Research. University of Edinburgh. Available at https://kirstypringle.github.io/advocacy-for-sustainable-research/. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

BibTeX:

@misc{pringle2026advocacy,
  title     = {Advocacy for Sustainable Research},
  author    = {Pringle, Kirsty and Smith, Lorna and Ochu, Erinma and Wilson, Greg},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://kirstypringle.github.io/advocacy-for-sustainable-research/},
  note      = {Licensed under CC BY 4.0}
}

Acknowledgements¶

This course is adapted from Greg Wilson's course on Organizational Change, used with his permission. The page and repository structure is based on Teaching for Impact developed by Anelda van der Walt and Sheena O'Connell, used with permission.

The Teaching for Impact workbook and training were inspired by the Instructor Training material developed by The Carpentries and the Creative Commons Certificate Course.