What research is being done in administrative justice? Announcing UKAJI’s upcoming Current Research Register

In the coming week, we will be publishing our current research register, listing a number of research projects on administrative justice that are currently in progress. Alongside the register, we’ll be publishing several research profiles of specific projects.

One of UKAJI’s key aims is to develop a researcher network, giving researchers the opportunity to engage with funders, practitioners and policy-makers and with a cross-disciplinary community of researchers undertaking empirical research.

We define administrative justice broadly, as “the interaction between people and the state, from rule-making to decision-making to challenge to resolution”. This covers a wide range of areas, including, for example, immigration and asylum, social security and welfare benefits, housing and education. It also covers topics such as decision-making, public services, complaints handling; themes of fairness and access to justice; and mechanisms such as courts, tribunals, ombuds and mediation.

As part of UKAJI’s work, we want to disseminate information about current research projects related to administrative justice that are being undertaken in the UK at the moment. These may be funded by research councils or other bodies, or are being undertaken without specific financial support. Many of these projects are at universities, but we are aware of research being done in other settings and by independent researchers and practitioners. The focus of this particular initiative is on work-in-progress; we appreciate that projects may not yet have findings or clear conclusions.

We also plan to produce a database of published research, and as live projects are completed and research reports published, they will move from the current research register to the published research database.

Why participate?

Being involved in the network and having a summary of your research published can help you:

• make it known what work you are involved in
• link up with other researchers with similar interests
• seek advice or input on your research while it’s in progress
• know what other work is being done
• inform funders and commissioning bodies about what research is currently in progress
• increase the potential impact of your work

Wider benefits to the administrative justice community

We hope that this initiative, as well as helping to develop a supportive network of researchers, will have wider benefits to those involved in administrative justice, including:

• developing a network of experts working on administrative justice
• expanding the understanding of what administrative justice is and what areas it covers
• creating a knowledge base
• developing joint projects
• sharing expertise and make research available and accessible to a wider audience (for example, practitioners, government departments, funders)

We’ll be publishing the register as an Excel spreadsheet, with accompanying profiles as PDF documents, early next week.