The ways in research shapes and influences the wider world are a key focus of the LSE Impact Blog. This post brings together eleven of the top posts on the subject of research impact that featured on the LSE Impact Blog in 2022. The true costs of knowl…
Category: Impact
From early career to senior academic, there are many ways researchers can engage with policy
Drawing on research from their recently published edited collection, Syahirah Abdul Rahman, Lauren Tuckerman and Tim Vorley explore the diversity of ways in which academics can engage with policymakers and consider how these interactions can change ove…
Co-producing critique and the impact of collective knowledge
Drawing on work carried out for the Realising Just Cities programme, Beth Perry discusses how co-production enabled participants to collectively develop and refine a form of critique that can drive positive change. The challenge of measuring and valuin…
To understand the impact of government policies we need a long-term evaluation culture
Policymakers may have ballpark ways to figure out what is ‘going on out there’, but the sure-fire way to know whether a policy is achieving its intended outcomes, for whom, and to learn lessons, is to evaluate. Raj Patel examines the challenges of asse…
Linking research to localities – The City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI)
For the past seven years, The City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI) has worked to develop evidence- based policy engaged research at city and regional scale. In this post, Simon Collinson, Rebecca Riley, and Anne Green reflect on the e…
No Impact People? Reframing research impact in the social sciences
Responding to a call for renewed thinking about how we understand and measure social science impact by Ziyad Marar, Ron Kassimir, outlines how the way in which impact is figured in the social sciences is often dependent on those external to its product…
Do Nudges Work? Debate over the effectiveness of ‘nudge’ provides a salutary lesson on the influence of social science
Two recent papers have again brought into question the value and effectiveness of ‘nudge’ based policy interventions. Tony Hockley argues that as much as these studies reveal about nudge policies, they say more about the complex way social and behaviou…
The next REF should place greater value on the ‘impact-in-process’ generated by co-produced research.
Impact has in the past two REF cycles established itself as an integral criteria of research assessment in the UK. However, the kinds of impacts that are valued and the ways in which the ‘reach’ and ‘significance’ of impact are interpreted by instituti…
Rootless or rooted in regions? International researchers and local engagement
As universities have internationalised and academic careers have come to encompass relocation across countries and continents, it has often been argued that universities and their researchers have lost the ability to address the issues prevalent in the…
Planning for Impact – A framework for achievable impacts in grant applications and impact statements.
Grant applications and impact statements for research projects are important points for researchers and assessors to consider the future impact of research and whether the proposed pathways to these goals are feasible. Drawing on evidence from REF2014 …