I greatly enjoyed my time as a Policy Leaders Fellow and taking part in the workshops that CSaP organised.

Coming from an Arts and Humanities background, I found the science-based workshops on neuroscience, data analytics and epigenetics to be both challenging and interesting. The epigenetics session, in particular, made a big difference to how I thought about poverty and deprivation.

My work as Chair of Civil Society Futures looks into how civil society organisations can organise to make an impact and adapt for the future.

As I was tasked with looking at where civil society might be in 10 years' time, the CSaP policy workshop on this topic was very timely; firstly, to enable a more sophisticated view of civil society, and secondly to brief policy makers on the big challenges.

The social cohesion session for Policy Leaders in February, and the CSaP annual conference panel discussion in June, were also very interesting as they directly referred to my passions and background.

I very much liked the methodology of the workshops and the interdisciplinary make-up of the participants and contributions. Overall, they have been great experiences as they provided a cost-effective ‘deep-dive’ into evidence.