A CSaP Policy Workshop looked at future possibilities for more effective engagement between civil society and government.

CSaP's 2017 annual reception saw Deborah Bronnert from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Professor Jaideep Prabhu from Cambridge Judge Business School, speak about the impact their CSaP connections had had on their work.

Cambridge's new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, gave his inaugural speech on 2 October.

According to the final report of the 1996 World Food Summit – food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life". A multitude of complex problems stand in the way of achieving food security; can an disciplinary approach bring about their solution?

Chaired by Julia Unwin, former Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, panel members included Tom Hook, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Professor Dominic Abrams, University of Kent, and Dr Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge.

Why does it matter that we should have devolution in England? What has happened to English devolution over the past year? These are just two of the questions discussed by Jo Casebourne in this session on 'Devolution in England'.

CSaP announces the names of the successful Policy Fellows who will start their programmes in autumn 2017.

There is an increasing need for environmental data to inform policy decisions. At the same time, technical advances, including in data science, are leading to the prospect of being able to provide information about environmental risks across an increasingly broad spectrum of policy-relevant issues.

A CSaP Policy Workshop convened a panel of experts to discuss the implications of advances in data science and genomics.

David Rose (Geography, CSaP, UCL STEaPP) and Rebecca Robertson (Zoology) led an inter-disciplinary workshop assessing the role of decision support tools in conservation.