This paper draws on Ball et al.’s (2017) network ethnography, to investigate policy mobility and the assemblage of inanimate objects in educational research, in the form of an ‘evidence broker’. It focuses on a national education research institute funded by the Australian Government, named the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO). Positioned as essentially bipartisan and apolitical, AERO was incorporated in 2021 to accelerate the use of research evidence and set a ‘national agenda’. As modelled on the UK’s Education Endowment Foundation and the What Works Centre, it establishes important legislative precedents to collaborate with venture philanthropy. The paper sets out to examine how the policy network fundamentally reshapes the ecosystem including functionality of capital and power, translating things and ideas into policies that retain material affects. Arguably, drawing upon a metaphor for conceptualising a policy network (Knox et al., 2006) may be useful in conceptualising a policy network as put together, held together, assembled and strategically constructed. It works to translate research evidence in education as homogeneous, impartial and singular, performed and embodied within a range of durable materials, such as evidence rubrics, RCTs, and government legislation. Governance via selective networks and the assemblage of stable structures, that endeavour to render education evidence into a ‘neutral’ or inanimate object, is concerning for matters of democracy, transparency and accountability.

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