REF 2029: what’s the story for public engagement?

REF 2029 represents a significant step forward from REF 2021, in the way it encourages HEIs to embed more strategic support for public engagement. The guidance for the exercise was published in December 2025 after a long period of consultation, including a ‘pause’ in Autumn 2025 to “ensure alignment with government priorities and vision for higher education”, and to address concerns about the potential increase in bureaucracy particularly around the proposed People, Culture and Environment Profile. 

The final framing of the three profiles is explained below, where we draw out the implications for public engagement. 

REF 2029 retains the familiar three-profile structure, but each profile has been subtly re-shaped. Taken together, these changes strengthen the visibility of public engagement as a core part of research excellence — not an optional add-on. 

REF 2029 reframes what was previously assessed as “outputs” as a contribution to knowledge and understanding. While disciplinary research excellence remains central — and CKU continues to carry the greatest weighting — the way excellence is articulated has changed. 

The guidance moves away from narrow output-counting towards a collective, portfolio-based account of how knowledge is produced and advanced. Units are invited to explain how different forms of expertise, methods, infrastructures, and collaborative practices contribute to shared intellectual strength. This includes recognising contributions from a wider group of staff who undertake, enable, or support research, not only those in traditional research roles. At the same time, a much broader range of research outputs is explicitly welcomed, with quality judged through explanation and context rather than format alone. 

What this means for public engagement 

Although CKU is not an engagement assessment in itself, it creates clearer space to recognise that engagement can be part of how knowledge is produced — not just how it is communicated. Participatory, co-produced, practice-based, and dialogic approaches can be framed as intellectually substantive where they contribute to advancing understanding. The recognition of diverse contributors and diverse outputs also supports research cultures in which engagement activity — and the people who make it possible — are more visible within accounts of research quality. 

A significant change in REF 2029 is the reframing of the Impact profile as Engagement and Impact. This signals a clear shift in emphasis: engagement is now recognised as a vital part of how impact is achieved. 

The guidance introduces a formal definition of engagement, emphasising purposeful, responsible, and context-appropriate interaction, including two-way exchange, listening, and accountability. Panels explicitly welcome narratives that describe engagement across the lifecycle of research — from shaping the underpinning work through to enabling, mediating, or sustaining impact. 

A particularly important technical change is the removal of the 2★ quality threshold for underpinning research. Underpinning research now only needs to meet the REF definition of research. This reduces burden and removes a barrier that previously excluded valuable forms of local, applied, or practice-based research from being used in impact case studies. 

What this means for public engagement 

REF 2029 gives institutions greater freedom to use the underpinning research section to work harder in telling the engagement story. Rather than simply asserting quality, institutions can explain how engagement-rich knowledge-building activity created the conditions for impact to be realised — for example by shaping relevance, building trust, enabling uptake, or sustaining change over time. Engagement can be explained as a causal mechanism within impact narratives, not just as supporting activity. Responsible engagement practices, such as inclusive design, ethical safeguards, and fair partnership working, can also be framed as strengthening impact. Engagement professionals and other enabling roles can now be explicitly recognised as contributors within case studies. 

What was previously the Environment statement has been reshaped as Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE). This profile places greater emphasis on strategy as an active, adaptive response to context, alongside people, learning, and culture. 

SPRE focuses less on listing facilities or activities, and more on demonstrating how strategy translates into practice over time. Institutions are asked to show how their priorities and approaches respond to their specific operating context — including disciplinary mix, institutional mission, scale, and resources — and how this has shaped what people have been able to achieve since REF 2021. This framing supports the recognition of diverse types of HEI and department, rather than implying a single model of excellence. 

Crucially, REF 2029 explicitly seeks to value all those who undertake, enable, or support research, engagement, and impact — across academic, professional, technical, and doctoral roles. Engagement is embedded within SPRE through its focus on collaboration, partnership quality, and external connection. 

What this means for public engagement 

SPRE provides the clearest space yet to demonstrate engagement as a collective, institutional capability, shaped by strategy and context. It allows institutions to show how engagement is supported through leadership, investment, professional expertise, training, partnership infrastructure, and learning mechanisms — and how these supports have evolved over time. The emphasis on adaptive strategy helps explain why engagement looks different in different settings, valuing diversity of approach rather than conformity. The often-invisible work of engagement professionals — including brokerage, relationship-building, ethical oversight, evaluation, and culture change — can now be evidenced as integral to research excellence. 

Individually, the changes to each profile are relatively modest. Taken together, they represent a significant shift in how the REF understands and values the relationship between research and society. 

REF 2029 does not ask institutions to reduce their focus on disciplinary excellence. Instead, it asks them to be clearer and more intentional about how knowledge is created, how it connects with others beyond academia, and how people and systems enable this work responsibly within particular contexts. 

For public engagement, this is a moment of alignment: 

• CKU makes it easier to explain why engagement matters to research quality, recognising diverse contributors and outputs.
• Engagement & Impact legitimises engagement as part of how impact is realised, supported by the removal of the 2★ threshold for underpinning research.
• SPRE makes visible the strategic, people-centred, and adaptive systems that enable engagement to happen well in different institutional contexts. 

Crucially, the three profiles are designed to work together. Panels will look for coherence across them: between an institution’s research philosophy, its engagement and impact narratives, and the way it supports people and partnerships in practice. 

Building on over 15 years of experience supporting public engagement and research culture change, the NCCPE is developing a focused set of REF 2029 support packages to help institutions respond confidently and proportionately. 

Our support is designed to meet institutions at different stages of readiness, and to help teams move from early sense-making to clear, credible narrative development, without adding unnecessary burden. 

• REF Planning 
  An institution-wide workshop to support early orientation and shared understanding. It brings together researchers, professional services staff, and leaders to explore what REF 2029 is really asking, build a shared language around research excellence and public value, and align expectations before detailed drafting begins.
• Engagement & Impact  
  A practical workshop for researchers and engagement professionals working on impact case studies. Using real case studies in progress, participants strengthen their explanation of how engagement enabled impact, clarify contribution and responsibility, and develop judgement-ready narratives aligned with REF 2029 guidance.
• SPRE Narrative Development  
  A hands-on workshop for institutions preparing SPRE submissions. It supports teams to turn reflection into a clear, evidence-informed account of strategy, people, and research environment, showing how engagement, impact, and culture are supported in practice, how approaches have evolved since REF 2021, and what has been learned along the way. 

Drawing on the NCCPE’s long-standing work on engagement, culture, and institutional change, these resources are designed to help institutions tell confident, credible stories about how their research creates public value.