Facilitating research impact - University �鶹��ѡ

Through Research England's Quality-related Research (QR) funding, we are enhancing engagement and research impact in research cultures across the University. See examples below for a snapshot of researchers and research-related staff's work.

Creating a culture for impactful research

The Culture of Impact and Engagement (Arts and Law) project.

Transcript

We saw an opportunity with the QR project to reinvigorate people's interest and positivity around impact, so it offered a chance to put in place a number of interventions and events and workshops that meant it would enable staff to see why it's worth doing impact again post REF.

So I think the most exciting result of our project has been really you can feel a kind of palpable increased sense of positivity across the college amongst colleagues in relation to impact. And also an increased confidence in embedding impact into their research projects from the outset, confidence and also willingness to do so. And I think for me perhaps most the exciting result was people describing themselves now as being champions of impact within their own departments and schools.

Staff in the college are more willing to engage with us on doing impact more generally speaking. A newer cohort of staff of come out the woodwork wanting to do impact and coming to us to kind of understand the best ways of going about it.

So we've seen some really great outcomes for the project so our next steps are to use a further tranche of QR funding for the college, in order to take the best aspects of the work that we did and continue those. So for example we have a little fund for collaborative work around impact, which might be collaboration between colleagues with different levels of experience or between Professional Services staff and academics. We're also organising some more networking events between academics and partners, particularly in the culture and creative industry sector.

We're continuing to deliver particular training around particular thematic areas of impact, so things like impact in education or impact using storytelling, and really kind of taking those aspects of the work that really worked and continuing to embed and deliver those within the college.

The Culture of Impact and Engagement (Arts and Law) project has improved skills, fostered network building and created a more stable support structure for impactful research in the University’s College of Arts and Law.

Over 50 researchers and research-related staff participated and they are now better equipped to identify, generate, and maximise impact and engagement opportunities. Researchers are more confident in their ability to do impactful research, with many championing impact within their own departments – and they have also developed closer relationships with external partners across various sectors.

The project will live on through new networks and relationships, and guidance to support developing and funding impact, evidencing, and co-production within the College in a resource hub to embed a culture of impact and engagement into their ways of working.

My involvement in the Culture of Impact and Engagement project has made an enormous difference to the way I think about my research. I now find that impact is something I consider completely central to my research identity, and one of the areas of my work I am most excited about. It was one of the most transformative training/mentor opportunities I’ve had at the University.
Dr Toria Johnson
Associate Professor in Early Modern Literature

Piloting an artist residency to enrich research culture

'Sounding Change' is an artist residency programme hosted by the Department of Music at the University �鶹��ѡ.

Transcript

So I was inspired to start ‘Sounding Change’ to explore ways in which we can work with non-academics within the department, to both diversify our own work to challenge us as a department but also to be able to bring in work to the university that isn't represented at all.

And so I felt that a residency programme would give us a long time, they were run over 10 months, to really develop partnerships to really explore this idea and to see if it works as well. It's a vision that I had that I felt that was also shared across colleagues at the department.

So there were a few things that I found really exciting across the course of the project. The first was that we put out a call for artists and we got a significant number that applied from across the UK and even some from abroad, who we weren't able to facilitate at this stage. So having over 100 applicants was testament to the fact that it was recognised as a really important project.

And then working with the artists over residency period was genuinely exciting to see those ideas developing but ultimately towards the end of the project when we actually put those performances on and seeing them come to life.

So some of our postgraduates and our staff that have engaged with the project and with the artists have really benefited from that dialogue with people working outside of academia. It's helped to maybe change our perceptions of how relevant our research is, so seeing actually relevance where maybe we didn't before. For our postgraduate researchers it really helped them to see how the work that they're doing can be used outside of academia.

And really hoping that we can run a project over a number of years so that we can continue to engage with non-academics and to have really meaningful partnerships and relationships with them as we move into the future.

'Sounding Change', a pilot artist residency programme set-up to foster collaboration between artists and the University’s Department of Music, has enriched the department with new perspectives and increased the diversity in artistic output.

Annie Mahtani, Professor of Electroacoustic Composition and Practice, led the programme. Over 10 months , and Bullyache hosted workshops, engaged with researchers and involved undergraduate and postgraduate students in their residency projects. The artists were supported to take creative risks, develop their practice, and create new work. Each artist produced a public performance, showcasing their development and the impact of their residency.

The presence of professional artists has enriched the research environment, fostering new practices and approaches among academic staff and students. For Annie and other colleagues in the Department of Music, Sounding Change provided insights into running artist residencies and adapting university resources to support non-academic artists.

The team worked with external evaluators to develop a Theory of Change to assess the project's impact and guide future iterations.

Platforming creative collaboration with the city

Through The Exchange Community Gallery Project, the South Entrance of our space in the city has become a dynamic exhibition space, creating new opportunities for connection and collaboration between University �鶹��ѡ academics, our communities and third-sector organisations.

Tailoring careers advice for postgraduate researchers

In alignment with the University's Employability Strategy, the PGR External Engagement Project increased opportunities for postgraduate researchers to engage with employers and external partners for their career development, creating new opportunities for mentoring and opportunities to shape careers-related activities bespoke to postgraduate researchers. in alignment with the University's Employability Strategy.

QR funding enabled us to extend existing Careers Network opportunities to postgraduate researchers for the very first time, and gave us the evidence needed to secure two full-time roles focusing exclusively on Postgraduate External Engagement.
Holly Prescott
Careers Adviser for Postgraduate Researchers