This series is published in collaboration with the CORD Partnership.

Dr Kevin Wozniak

Areas of Research Interest (ARI) are published statements that describe an organisation’s priorities for identifying, conducting and using research to inform their policies and practices. ARIs may summarise an organisation’s internal research work, provide topics or questions in need of research, or both. Signalling the areas of research that are of interest to organisations at a given moment, they can foster engagement and collaboration both within and across the justice sector, and between the sector and researchers. Some might require new research; others may be answered by collating existing research evidence.

In 2025, the CORD Partnership – a partnership of over 60 organisations bringing together criminal justice research, policy and practice in Ireland – established a committee to explore how to support criminal justice bodies in Ireland to develop ARIs. We looked at ARIs published by the UK Government Office for Science and College of Policing and Ireland’s Department of Children, Disability and Equality and spoke to experts in the area. Here, we outline what we learned about how organisations can develop and use ARIs to answer important policy and practice questions.

Writing and publishing ARIs

Organisations should start by considering their strategic goals, objectives and priorities to identify the areas in which research can support their work. They can conduct internal surveys and consultations to explore staff views on their research needs, and collate the research they have conducted or have access to, to help identify knowledge gaps and formulate ARI statements.

ARI statements can be broad or specific to suit the organisation’s needs. For example, a police body could offer a specific question (e.g., ‘How does pairing police officers with medical professionals to attend drug-related incidents affect the harms caused by overdoses?’) or a broader topic (e.g., ‘Policing strategies to respond to illicit substance use and addiction’) to which research on many different phenomena can still speak. Specific, targeted ARIs may be useful for organisations that already possess a foundation of research knowledge and have particular gaps which need to be filled. Broader, general ARIs may help organisations that are yet to engage deeply with research and need to begin building a pertinent body of evidence.

To help you and your team formulate ARIs, some useful pointers are:

• Consult internal stakeholders and partners to assess the areas of most interest and importance.
• Assess what research already exists relating to your organisation’s goals, priorities and interests.
• Identify and reach out to academics and others with expertise related to the selected topic(s).
• Consider who in your organisation and in partner organisations would be interested in collaborating to develop, publish and seek responses to ARIs.

Published ARIs commonly include the following sections:

• An executive summary that explains the purpose of your ARI document, and how you hope to use the responses and research evidence to benefit your organisation and the public you serve.
• A list of the ARIs you wish to publish with a brief explanation of each one.
• Contact information for a person in your organisation to whom researchers can reach out.
• It is optional to provide desired methods and disciplinary approaches of the research, or levels and types of training and experience of researchers, with which or whom you hope to engage.
• Brief details about the organisation’s policies and procedures regarding research, requirements of accessing data and capacity, if any, to fund research projects. Link to your organisation’s research application forms or policies, if you have them.

Most importantly, do not overthink ARIs! Propose whichever topics are most important to your organisation at the present time, in whatever manner best captures your organisation’s present research needs and goals. Your ARIs can change over time as you engage more and more with research.

What then? The ARI lifecycle

ARIs can be published in various forms. In the UK, which has more experience with developing and publishing ARIs, they have been published in searchable government websites (e.g., here) or in bespoke reports (e.g., the Scottish Justice Analytics Unit here). Once published, you can publicise them by sending them to other organisations in your sector and to the research community in Ireland and abroad. This can involve hosting a large launch event or a smaller event, webinar or discussion group to attract and network with subject experts, or presenting your published themes and questions at academic events.

Finally, ARIs should reflect medium- to long-term goals for your organisation. After an appropriate period of time passes (say, three years), organisations should assess how well researchers responded to the set of ARIs and how useful the research evidence obtained or produced has been.

What about funding?

Irish criminal justice organisations may be interested in publishing ARIs to synthesise knowledge or foster new research projects, but lack the resources to fund projects themselves. That should not dissuade organisations from publishing ARIs. If you are interested in collaborating on funded projects, you can point readers to external funding sources of which you are aware, or note a general willingness to consider being involved in applications researchers make. Establishing ARIs is intended to improve synergy within your organisation and with your potential collaborators and supporters! Furthermore, researchers who specialise in particular areas will likely engage with your ARIs without funding, if they are motivated to use research to inform policy and practice or discuss possible future research collaboration.

How the CORD Partnership can help Ireland’s justice sector develop and publish ARIs

Dr Ian Marder

When developing our two-year action plan for the CORD Partnership, what came through strongly was that agencies were interested in engaging with research and researchers, but it wasn’t always obvious where to start or how research evidence could practically support their work. When one public sector partner drew our attention to ARIs as a concept and expressed a willingness to develop some in their organisation, we jumped at the chance to include an action which involved helping organisations put ARIs together.

ARIs can be an important part of research-policy-practice engagement. Researchers do not always know what public and community sector bodies are interested in learning about at a given time, or to whom they can reach out to discuss the collection and use of research evidence. In my experience, academics who work on crime and justice issues in Ireland – CORD has over 70 such members from 17 institutions, which is far from everyone – are highly motivated to help policy and practice bodies meet the needs of the people they work with. Researchers can make reference to your ARIs in funding applications. They are also likely to know about the existing research, to which they have access, that could help you answer crucial questions without having to start new projects. Moreover, an ARI development process is a chance for you to explore the questions your staff and partners have, and think about how your organisation could develop its capacity around research and data – something which all public, and publicly funded, organisations are increasingly asked and expected to do.

What the CORD Partnership offers

The CORD Partnership supports over 150 people from 60 organisations in the research, justice and community sectors to think about how they can collaborate or learn from each other for mutual benefit. As part of this, any organisation in Ireland whose work relates to crime or justice can reach out to discuss how we can support you to develop, publish and use ARIs. Whether you are large or small, public or community sector and work in policy or practice, we can collaborate to pilot some pro bono support mechanisms:

• Understanding how ARIs can help: If you are interested in using research to support your work but are unsure if ARIs are necessary, we can discuss this.
• Developing a process for ARI design: If you are interested in developing ARIs but are not sure about what process to use to review existing research or consult staff internally and/or partners externally, we can help tease this out.
• Help designing ARIs: If you want to design ARIs and want researchers to support that process, we can find the right people to help you craft research questions or give feedback on draft ARIs.
• Collating and circulating ARIs: If you already developed research questions or themes, we can help you ensure the right people are made aware of your areas of interest.
• Answering ARIs: If you are seeking answers to specific research questions, we can help search existing research and develop short briefings or materials to answer specific policy and practice questions.

Most importantly, this does not have to take a huge amount of time. Larger organisations may wish to run significant internal processes to consult their staff; smaller organisations may be able to put together suitable research questions over one or two short meetings. Whatever your organisation’s size and need, it is likely that new or existing research evidence can help you better meet people’s needs.

Dr Kevin Wozniak is director of the Centre for Criminology and assistant professor in Criminology at Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology. As the chair of the CORD Partnership Subcommittee on Areas of Research Interest, he was supported in this work by Dr Clíodhna Bairéad (Probation Service), Dr Sophia Carey (Policing and Community Safety Authority), Caroline Copeland (An Garda Síochána), Dr Sarah Curristan (Office of the Inspector of Prisons), Dr Orla Gallagher (Irish Prison Service), Dr Susan Leahy (University of Limerick) and Alice Wainwright (Department of Justice).

Dr Ian Marder is chair of the CORD Partnership and associate professor in criminology at Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology. To explore how the CORD Partnership can support your work, please contact him here.