Making an impact with your research

This training has been organised by the Civil Society, Development and Democracy (CDD) Pathway and is open to all ESRC and non-ESRC funded PhD and MA Social Research students within the WRDTP’s seven partner universities. Whilst this workshop is aimed at CDD Pathway students, PGRs from all seven interdisciplinary Pathways are welcome to attend

This workshop will help you to understand the importance and relevance of the impacts – effects, changes, benefits – on wider society that can arise from academic research. You will consider what it takes to achieve impact and what barriers may stand in the way and help to clarify what is and isn’t considered to be impact. You will reflect on how your research has the potential to make a difference outside academia in the future and begin to think about setting in place some practical steps to facilitate this.

Following a short introductory talk by Dr James Hall (the Faculty Impact Manager for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leeds), we will look at some case studies to see how narratives about academic impact are constructed and how people evidence these. We will then work individually and in small groups using various planning tools and templates to think practically about the impact of our own research. Lunch will be served from 12:00 to 13:00

Students attending this training will gain:

• a fuller understanding of the significance in higher education of impact from research and what this might mean for them in their careers.
• Insights into definitions of impact and learn why it might matter professionally.
• Knowledge and skills necessary to craft and refine their own impact goals, analyse stakeholders, and attempt to produce a theory of change.
• By the end of the event, students should be able to think logically, pragmatically and critically about their own research impact. They will be able to reflect on how their PhD projects could lead to non-academic impact over different time scales.

Pre-reading

Attendees may wish to browse the REF 2021 database of impact case studies: https://results2021.ref.ac.uk/impact