Maximising the Impact of Social Sciences Research

There is increased discussion of the usefulness of ‘impact’ as a measure to assess academic outcomes. In the UK, an impact dimension has been introduced to the national quality assurance programme for higher education and all research councils demand an impact statement as part of their application procedures. But how do individual academics try and get a sense of their own impact? And more, how do they try and increase the impact of their research? This session will look at what research impact is, both academic and external, and how it can be measured. It will also examine how academics can prepare to increase the impact that their work has by looking carefully at how they collaborate on research, the outputs they produce, and how they communicate and disseminate their findings and expertise.

Biography
Jane Tinkler is Manager of the LSE Public Policy Group and Lead Researcher on the LSE’s Impact of Social Sciences project. This is a three year HEFCE funded programme in collaboration with Imperial College London and the University of Leeds. The project aims to develop metrics for tracking academic impact and also to investigate the impacts that academic research has on government, business and civil society. She also oversees the Public Policy Group’s four academic blogs: British Politics and Policy, European Politics and Policy, the LSE Review of Books and Impact of Social Sciences blog.

Her academic research interests focus on the quality of public services in the UK. Projects currently include the use of design approaches to innovative change in the public sector and citizen redress in UK public services. All three projects will result in books to be published over the next year. Her most recent publication (with Dunleavy, Margetts and Bastow) is Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State and e-Government (Oxford University Press, 2008).

LSE Public Policy Group website: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/government/research/resgroups/LSEPublicPolicy/Home.aspx

Report on Maximising the Impact of Humanities and Social Sciences Research is available here: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/government/research/resgroups/LSEPublicPolicy/Projects.aspx

This seminar is open to members of the Institute for Business, Social Sciences and Public Policy, and staff and researchers of the College of Business, Public Policy and Law and the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies, NUI Galway.

All Welcome!