Skip to main content

Pursue the impact you want

Date

Pursue the impact you want

When I was invited to give a talk at Leeds Beckett University’s inaugural Research and Enterprise Conference, the key message I wanted to get across was the choice of what impact to pursue, or even whether you seek to achieve impact beyond the academy, is yours. If you try to second guess what impact ‘the funders’ or ‘the government’ want you to pursue and this doesn’t fit with your values and motivations for being a researcher, then at best you will do it half-heartedly or at worst you will do it cynically. Neither of these situations will work for you and neither will they work for those you are attempting to help and the latter situation may harm the reputation of the academy within those groups.

The other message I wanted to get across was ‘Forget REF’. I tried to count how many times the Vice Chanceller, Professor Peter Slee, and the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, Professor Andrew Slade, mentioned it in their introductions to the day. I lost count at about 50. I found that a little sad because no one comes into an academic career to get a great score in REF. They come into it because of a deep interest in the subject. I think we should also look at impact through that same lens – ‘What impact do I deeply care about that could be possible from the research I love?’ Whatever answer you come to – that is your definition of impact and I promise you – it will fit into the REF definition, if you choose to submit it.

So please let your choice of impact come from within, then go and talk to people who are from the groups that could benefit from that impact. Those conversations could well be the most interesting and inspiring conversations you may ever have.