Good morning everyone!
I hope you had a great weekend and are looking forward to your week. A few impact updates for you…
- If you are interested in my latest reflections on REF2021, skip to the end of this email (I don’t want to bore the rest of you!)
- Last week’s podcast was in two parts, but it has been the second part that has been getting lots of attention on social media:
- My question was, “How resilient are you as a researcher”? Using grant rejections and workplace bullying as examples, I explained how I have transformed some of my most painful experiences as a researcher into some of the richest experiences of my career. Sometimes there is no choice but to make an official complaint and get bullying investigated formally but before you get to that point, here are four ways of surviving work in a challenging environment. Listen here
- In part 1, I use the same theoretical framework and four questions to ask how we can achieve transformative or disruptive impacts from our research. Listen here
- To listen to previous episodes or subscribe, visit https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/podcast
- There are still spaces in my webinar about how to use Evernote to track your impact next month
- My two latest blogs are based on questions from people I’ve trained recently. I have a system to ensure I answer every question I get from people I train, but I also answer most other questions I get via social media and email, so get in touch if you have a question and I’ll do my best to answer!
- The most recent Fast Track Impact blog is by Sawsan Khuri, on her winning formula for the perfect research project meeting
- I also wrote a guest blog recently for Research Outreach on two questions every researcher should ask themselves about the impact of their research
- Read my new co-authored paper on building university-based boundary organisations that facilitate impacts on environmental policy and practice
- I found this new manual by Kirsi Pulkkinen and colleagues useful - it shows how you can take a dialogic approach to co-creation of knowledge with companies and others to achieve impact. The focus is on working with business but the principles apply much more widely
- For UK readers interested in REF2021 (please skip over this everyone else!), the deadline for responses to the latest consultation was last week. I’ve seen quite a few responses from Universities across the sector (and these from ARMA and NCCPE) and the majority have taken aim at the proposal for the science disciplines in Main Panel A to evaluate impact differently to everyone else, privileging quantitative evidence of impacts do not build on work submitted to the previous REF. Apart from the fact that it will be easy for most researchers to game-play their way out of being marked as a continuation case study (by updating the underpinning research), I hope that the strong response from the sector will mean these proposals don’t go forward. There are many excellent examples of mixed methods and in some cases mainly qualitative evaluations of case studies that scored will from Main Panel A in 2014 and there is no theoretical reason why quantitative methods should be more or less effective for evaluating impacts from certain disciplines. Moreover, Lord Stern put forward a strong moral argument for rewarding the generation of impact beyond the REF2014 period, so there would be no incentive to drop relationships that would not yield impacts in the current period.
Thanks for reading this far! I hope you found some of this useful. If so, it would be great if you can forward to colleagues who can subscribe here for future updates. Sorry this isn't particularly well organised - I just email an update when I've got enough useful stuff to share with you all, so not sure when the next one will be yet!
Have a great week,
Mark
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Research England & N8 funded Chair of Socio-Technical Innovation
School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University
N8 Agri-Food, Institute for Agri-Food Research & Innovation and Centre for Rural Economy
Working across the N8 Universities of Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York
Visiting Professor at University of Leeds and Birmingham City University
Research Lead for International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s UK Peatland Programme
www.profmarkreed.com
mark.reed@newcastle.ac.uk
Tel. 07538082343
Twitter: @profmarkreed
Fast track your impact: training for researchers by researchers
I work two evenings a week, so if this email arrives outside office hours, please do not feel you have to reply until normal working hours.
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