Presentation for postgraduate students and early career researchers at the University of the West of Scotland about the 'impact agenda': problems, issues and opportunities

1. noun | ˈɪmpakt | 1 the action of one object coming
forcibly into contact with another: there was the sound of
a third impact | [mass noun] : bullets which expand and
cause devastating injury on impact.
2 a marked effect or influence: our regional measures
have had a significant impact on unemployment.
’…
Dealing with the impact
agenda
Graham Jeffery

2. Claiming
‘impact’ – can
you plan for
impact?
• Justifying the public value of our
research
• Exploring how to translate and share
across different knowledge
communities
• Thinking about who might find it useful
• Engaging with professional
communities and communities of
practice

3. The
unintended
(or intended)
consequences
of high stakes
research
cultures…
• Who gets to produce knowledge? Who is an
‘expert’?
• What forms of knowledge are recognised, valued…
….and funded (Lyotard: mercantilization)
• In universities, push towards instrumentalism and
performativity – justification in terms of ‘impact’ and
economic/social applicability
• At same time, multiplying fields of
study/methods/approaches/radical interdisciplinarity
• This has impact on professional identities
• The entrepreneurial subject – professional identities
in education/business/commerce/the arts:
policy/practice discourses construct academic
subjectivities

4. Messy realities versus neat summaries

5. Doing research
is messy but we
are expected to
write it up
neatly…making
sense of mess
• www.compound13.org
• Some big knowledge claims here but there are
numerous practical challenges to make this
work – are we victims of ambition, or naïve? Or
worse, just extracting knowledge rather than
co-producing it as claimed?

6. ‘Impact’ is
fundamentally
about
relationships
• Who trusts your research findings? Getting
your work on other people’s agendas/in front
of people
• Policy agendas – ‘evidence based’ policy is all
very well but politicians and governments like
to select the best evidence to suit their case
• Arts, humanities and social science research is
not the same as ‘scientific discovery’ despite
how much some people wish it was
• Boiling your findings down to simple messages
may not do your work sufficient justice
• But the ‘executive summary’ is certainly a
useful communication/advocacy tool
• Ethical issues? Relationship building - ‘making
your work useful’

7. Academia as
an ‘impact
industry’
• `Stephen J. Ball (2012): Performativity,
Commodification and Commitment: an I-Spy
Guide to the neoliberal university
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10
80/00071005.2011.650940]
Grimpact – time to acknowledge the ‘dark
side’ of the impact agenda
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences
/2019/05/28/grimpact-time-to-acknowledge-
the-dark-side-of-the-impact-agenda/

8. Think about
relationships as
well as impact
• Building a programme of work over
time
• Trust, confidence, sharing
• The value of academic work as a
connecting and interpreting tool –
making sense of the world and helping
people see things differently
• It’s not just about self-promotion,
although there’s no doubt that your
reputation matters
• Sometimes it might be better to stay
‘under the radar’ – these are strategic
choices

9. Some other
things to
consider
• What happens if your work has
negative impacts…on participants, on
public understanding, on you?
• Is there the room for failure?
• Is research only really about
‘outcomes’? In some projects, might
process actually be more important?
Change is not just driven by impact but
also by adjustment, adaptation,
translation, learning, etc.
• Who is your work for?

10. Graham.Jeffery@uws.ac.uk
www.twitter.com/grahamjeffery
www.generalpraxis.org.uk
www.compound13.org