Biography
Gill’s research focusses on the quality of evidence for science-policy dialogue and for constructing relevant research agendas. Other sectors have well-established procedures for using systematic, evidence-informed approaches to science-policy dialogue. These include health care (Cochrane Collaboration), social welfare (Campbell Collaboration), and environmental conservation (Collaboration for Environmental Evidence – CEE). Her research aims to draw on their experiences to examine the potential for establishing a similar ‘collaboration without walls’ to prioritize and produce systematic reviews and improve the quality of the natural resources science that informs policy.
Gill is currently leading a collaborative project co-ordinated by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), with its international partners – CATIE, CIRAD, ICRAF and IUFRO – to establish the Evidence-Based Forestry (EBF) Initiative. The Initiative, which started in 2012, reflects these institutions’ leading roles in generating evidence for policy processes about forests and forestry, defined broadly in the contexts of both landscapes and sustainable development. The EBF Initiative was established to facilitate and promote use of systematic methods for informing decisions and actions about forests and forestry. The EBF initiative is supported with resources contributed by UK DfID’s Know For Program Grant. To date, the EBF initiative work has established a mechanism for introducing evidence-informed frameworks to conduct systematic reviews and systematic maps that conform to standards of existing collaborations. An international project – T20Q (Top Twenty Questions for Forestry & Landscapes) – to determine high priority research and policy questions was started in May 2014 in collaboration with the Sylva Foundation, an established partner of the Oxford Long-term Ecology Laboratory and Biodiversity Institute.
