Impact Academy provides training and development opportunities to improve your understanding of research impact and build your skills to maximise the societal, economic and environmental impact of your research. The programme, delivered by external experts and specialist staff from the University’s Research and Enterprise Office, covers all aspects of the research impact lifecycle and offers opportunities for academic, research and professional services staff of all levels.
18 October 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Research Impact Team
The first step to achieving impact is to identify the impacts you want to achieve and incorporate them into your research plan from the outset. Planning for impact includes considering what might change, for whom, to what extent, and when. This 1-hour webinar, will help you to identify who might benefit from your research and introduce you to some useful tools and resources to help you plan activities to maximise the impact of your research. This session is aimed at academic and research staff at all levels.
25 October 2023, 10am to 1pm
Event Organiser: Open Innovation Team, HM Government
This online interactive workshop aims to introduce the policy process in Government and the role and use of research evidence. The masterclass is run by Government civil servants from the Open Innovation Team who will give a first-hand insight into the policy process. This session is aimed at academics, research and professional services staff at all levels and PGR students.
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1 November 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Research Impact Team
The major UK funders are committed to excellent research which impacts on our economic and social wellbeing. This 1-hour webinar will focus on writing about impact in funding applications, provide some practical information on how to incorporate impact within your proposal and offer examples of good practice. Although this is a stand-alone session, it may be helpful to attend/watch the webinar for our related training Routes to Impact 1: Planning for Impact. This session is aimed at academic and research staff at all levels.
3 November 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Research Impact Team
Building impact into your research requires you to have a clear understanding of what impact is and how to integrate impact practices into the research process. This introductory webinar provides an insight into research impact with an overview of how impact can be planned for, generated and evidenced. The session will also introduce you to online tools and resources to support the understanding and generation of research impact. Delivered through the NEWCOMERS researcher development programme, this session is aimed at PhD students and early career researchers.
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8 November 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Research Impact Team
The Impact Module of the Research Information System (RIS-IM) is a secure repository for academic staff to store and track information about their engagement and knowledge exchange activities and the impact of their research outside of the academy. This in-person session will give you an overview of the new updated version of the RIS-IM and how to use it to track and document your research impact and offer you an opportunity to create and edit your own records with on-hand support from the Research Impact Team.
15 November 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Research Impact Team
Capturing and evidencing engagement and impact is important for researchers particularly in relation to impact case studies for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), but also in reporting to funding bodies and external partners. This interactive session will give an overview of how to use the Impact Module of the Research Information System (RIS) to document engagement and impact and record evidence. Some examples of the types of evidence that could be used to evidence the impact of your research will be provided along with practical tips on collecting it. This session is aimed at academic and research staff at all levels.
22 November 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Research Impact Team
Impact was introduced to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions, in 2014 and for the 2014 and 2021 assessments, HEIs were required to submit impact case studies demonstrating the impact of their research on wider society. This introductory webinar will provide an overview of the REF and how research impact is assessed and present examples of impact case studies from a range of disciplines. The session will also highlight the changes proposed for REF2028, and the implications of these changes. This session is aimed at early career researchers and academics not familiar with how impact is assessed in the REF.
23 November 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Nathalie Cornee (Overton)
Overton is the world’s largest searchable policy database, which tracks everything from white papers to think tank policy briefs to national clinical guidelines, and automatically finds the references to your scholarly research, academics and other outputs. It looks for the names of any researchers on expert panels, who are quoted in policy documents, who give evidence to committee hearings and more. Importantly it can also find the links between policy documents – often research is picked up by intermediaries like think tanks and agencies – giving you unparalleled insight into the dynamics of policymaking. This session will introduce you to Overton, and how to use it to track the impact of your own research on policy. This session is aimed at academic and research staff at all levels and PGR students.
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29 November 2023, 10am to 1pm
Event Organiser: Open Innovation Team, HM Government
Researchers often reflect that it’s difficult to explain their research to policymakers. Policymakers are busy and are rarely experts, lacking the context, deep background or technical expertise related to research. Storytelling techniques are used by journalists and policymakers themselves to help simplify complexity, grab attention, and communicate information. This training is aimed at researchers at all levels who want to influence policymakers and are keen to improve their communication skills to make their engagement as impactful as possible. The training explores storytelling techniques in general and can be applied to written work as well as interviews or public speaking.
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8 December 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Event Organiser: Research Impact Team
Effective public engagement with research can be a viable route to generating research impact. This online session will introduce you to public engagement with research and why it’s important. The session will outline the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s (NCCPE) 4 principles for effective engagement purpose, people, process, evaluation, will highlight different methods of engagement, how to identify your target audience and how best to engage them. This session is aimed at academic, research and professional services staff at all levels and PGR students.