The co-production paradigm has become commonplace across many disciplines as a means of orchestrating the production of useful knowledge aligned to different social needs. Drawing on the expertise of 36 co-production practitioners in the field of sustainability research, Dr Albert Norström, Dr Chris Cvitanovic, Dr Marie F. Löf, Dr Simon West and Dr Carina Wyborn, present a new working definition of […]
Category: Impact
To improve the global evidence ecosystem we need to listen to the Global South.
Drawing on their recent study of South Africa’s evidence ecosystem, Ruth Stewart, Harsha Dayal, Laurenz Langer and Carina van Rooyen, show how the global north has much to learn from evidence ecosystems in the global south. Outlining five lessons that can be learnt from the South African evidence ecosystem, they argue that if notions of a global evidence ecosystem are […]
2019 In Review: Practising research impact
The ways in research shapes and influences the wider world are a key focus of the LSE Impact Blog. This post brings together some of the top posts on the subject of research impact that featured on the Impact Blog in 2019. Invisible impact and insecure academics: structural barriers to engagement and why we should do it anyway Participatory Action […]
Book Review: Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher: Lived Experiences, New Perspectives edited by Kieran Fenby-Hulse, Emma Heywood and Kate Walker
In Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher: Lived Experiences, New Perspectives, Kieran Fenby-Hulse, Emma Heywood and Kate Walker bring together contributors to offer different voices on how researchers experience and respond to the demand for impact. Since the conceptualisation, search for and realisation of impact can have different effects on ECRs, this collection will help ECRs become more familiar with how others have coped with […]
Embracing multilingualism to enhance complexity sensitive research
Academics who engage with local stakeholders to develop their research processes often find themselves spanning between the local language in which the research process takes place and English, the undisputed lingua franca in academia. In this post, Patricia Canto, Susana Franco and Miren Larrea argue that embracing the coexistence of different languages in all the stages of the research cycle […]
A Systemic View of Research Impact – An Invitation
How do we understand research impact and how does this understanding shape the knowledge societies in which academics carry out and communicate their research? Posing these questions, Benedikt Fecher and Sascha Friesike present the first chapter of a work in progress and invite readers to contribute to a larger collaborative writing project seeking to reframe the way we currently think […]
If we’re serious about changing the world, we need to get our evidence right – A comment on the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics.
The announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics has highlighted divisions within the development economics community, particularly around the efficacy of using Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) as a tool for making social interventions. In this post Gorgi Krlev discusses the pros and cons of experimental approaches in economics and suggests that rather than seeing routes to delivering social change as […]
Manufacturing Collaboration – Can you teach researchers how to achieve impact?
As part of the impact agenda and the increased focus on realising social and economic returns on research investment, universities have increasingly sought to promote and train academics to carry out research collaborations across disciplines and with non-academic partners. Whilst this kind of research can be impactful, Helen B Woods argues that attempts to direct research in this way can […]
Publication is not enough, to generate impact you need to campaign
Being able to demonstrate the impacts of research outside of academia has become a standard requirement of a range of research funders. In this post, Toby Green draws on a recent case study of his own published research, to demonstrate how an approach to impact that regards publication as only one part of a long-term and cumulative communication campaign is […]
Tale of the converted: how complex social problems have made me question the use of data in driving impact
In practice the way in which research impacts and influences policy and society is often thought to be a rational, ordered and linear process. Whilst this might represent a ‘common sense’ understanding of research impact, in this cross-post John Burgoyne reflects on how upending the primacy of data and embracing complexity can lead to a more nuanced and effective understanding […]