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Paul-Enguerrand Fady: The Parliamentary Research Intern for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

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Paul-Enguerrand Fady has been working as a Parliamentary Research Intern for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle.

He was selected alongside five students for this prestigious internship experience organised by KCL’s Policy Institute, where he is the only scientist/non-humanities candidate.

Having competed in KCL's Policy Idol 2019 contest, going all the way to the finals, Paul-Enguerrand gained experience within the intersection of science and policy. As part of the interview process, he was asked to construct a 1,200 word policy brief and present it to Baroness Bull, a VP at King’s and Member of the House of Lords.

"I'm loving the internship.

"Being able to apply my research skill set to a super wide range of issues and hearing my briefing points spoken in the Chamber is super rewarding.

"The process was quite rigorous, we are the inaugural cohort of this scheme and only 6 of us were selected.

'The brief had to address 6 or 7 key sub-topics but fall strictly within the word count and be fully cited. For those who were fortunate enough to be selected, we then had a 30-minute interview with Baroness Bull and Professor Bobby Duffy (Director of the Policy Institute at King’s). The final six were selected based on interview performance.

"Over the past couple of months, I’ve worked on flood resilience and response; raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility; optimising Treasury investment in light of the climate emergency; and founding a new All-Party Parliamentary group. I’ve also pushed for more engagement on antimicrobial resistance, which is what I focus on in my research."

Paul-Enguerrand explained his reasoning for undertaking the internship is to take research and translate it into evidence-based policy for law and decision makers.

"It’s become clear to me that, more often than not, the rate-limiting factor in solving infectious disease problems is the political implementation of solid, existing science. This was impressed upon me by professors in my Microbiology & Immunology undergrad degree, and has held true since. We rarely need new blockbuster technologies—though of course we do need to keep innovating to stay ahead of the curve.

'What we desperately need is for good research to be translated into evidence-based policy for lawmakers and key stakeholders with decision-making power." 

Paul-Enguerrand said he is hoping to stay involved in policy following completion of his Internship and PhD.

"The hierarchical system in academia is good training for the world of politics, but having to cold-email Peers of the Realm to get them on board with a particular project is a skillset all its own.

"I’ll be looking into both academic and policy positions after this—there is no sense in limiting my options!

"It will all depend on the availability of research vs policy jobs, and whether I can work flexibly at the interface or not. I’m also having to familiarise myself with the lawmaking process and the particularities of Parliament, which will be invaluable when looking for policy jobs after this."

Paul-Enguerrand's research involves antimicrobial cross-resistance in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King’s College London & the National Infection Service at UK Health Security Agency (FKA Public Health England).