National frameworks for universities’ community engagement: perspectives from Italy, France and the UK

This working paper presents some preliminary outputs from the PRIN 2022 project ‘PLACES’, which aims at investigating the factors influencing universities’ community engagement across various levels – individual, institutional, and systemic. This work wants to provide an initial contribution to the study of systemic level, by offering an overview of the socio-economic and higher education frameworks – in Italy, France, and the United Kingdom –, that may support the development of universities’ community engagement. An extensive data collection was conducted, utilizing socio-economic and R&D indicators, higher education system data, survey results on public attitudes towards science, complemented by a retrieval of information on national public engagement strategies, drivers and incentives. The findings are organized into country fact sheets which systematically report data and information gathered for each country, preparing for future research to be performed within the project. The analysis reveals that Italy, France, and the UK have distinct socio-economical and higher education environment that may influence their approach to public engagement. In Italy, public engagement is strongly driven by the evaluation exercises targeting universities. In the UK, significant investment in R&D and a supportive academic environment facilitate initiatives that could enhance connections between academia and society. In France, there is a lack of institutional recognition for public engagement, as intended in the other two countries.