Research centres and groups

Neelam Raina: Hello and welcome to Middlesex University Research podcast.  

My name is Neelam Raina, and I am the Director of Research at Middlesex University. At Middlesex University, we do many different types of research that has widespread impact on our students, on our academics, and the wider community outside. The ambition of our research is to transform lives, and we do that in many different ways.

These podcasts are recordings done at Middlesex University by colleagues here, who will talk about their research, their ideas, why do we do research, how does it matter, and all kinds of issues in-between. So welcome to Middlesex University research podcasts. Thank you for joining us.

Mark Gray: I'm Dr. Mark Gray, Director of Knowledge Exchange at Middlesex University, and I'm here with Professor Stephen Syrett, Deputy Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange, at the faculty of business and law. We're going to talk about the notion of impact. The idea that our research and know-how inside academia can bring about change outside of it.

This, I suppose, is why many researchers are interested in their own subject in the first place. They think the problems in sociology, in arts practice, or oncology are inherently interesting themselves, but also that by understanding those subjects, we may be able to make life better for all of us.

Stephen, let's start by talking about what impact means in the research excellence framework. The periodic assessment of the quality of research in universities. In REF 2021, we were asked to think of impact as, and here comes a quotation from the guidance I'm afraid, the effect on change or benefit to the economy society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life beyond academia. Now, that's pretty broad, isn't it? How did you and colleagues in business and law think of impact when preparing for the last REF? What did it mean for you?

Stephen Syrett: Thank you Mark. As you say, that's such a big, all-encompassing definition. I think for us, the starting point was very much on identifying where a change had taken place, where we could actually point to something that previously had been done in a particular way and was now being done in a different type of way, or a policy that was once such and such, and now that policy had changed. The first thing is identifying where some change had taken place of whatever. Once you've identified that change, you can start thinking about how it fits in. Is it a political change is it an economic change, is it a change in public understanding or whatever. But in a way, if there hasn't been some change, some shifts, some movement from point A to point B, then there isn't the basis for an impact case study in in the first place. So I think that was very much what we focused on. And again, in those things where there had been change, sometimes that might be a very obvious major change, for example, a government policy that moved very significantly and very clearly from point A to point B. In other situations, it might be that there was an incremental, a series of perhaps more minor changes and that you brought those together, and together they constituted perhaps a significant shift together, but the individual changes might be less obviously significant. So that was very much where we started.

Mark Gray: And when talking to colleagues about impact and talking about change, did you find in preparation for the REF exercise that there was a kind of awareness of the significance of change affected through research. Are most colleagues attuned to the idea of impact as being an important part of the research work they do?

Stephen Syrett: I think this is an area that's changed very markedly over the last 10 years or so, or perhaps longer than that. I think now there is a much greater understanding of that. If we go back to previous REFs, the first time that impact was introduced into REF it caught everyone, to some extent, by surprise. And there were a lot of people wandering around saying how do we do this, how do we demonstrate it, and so forth.

Now we've been through a couple of REF cycles with that, it's firmly embedded on the research agenda and there's a much greater understanding. As a result, I think staff are generally more aware of the issues around it. However, because it is a tricky agenda, demonstrating impact is not straightforward. I guess there's still differential levels of understanding of that. I think some people get it, perhaps that's to do with personality or the nature of the research they do, others really struggle with it. They find it much more difficult to get on board with what it is. But again, that may be how they understand what an academic is and what they are trying to achieve, which is fine. There's space for everyone as far as I'm concerned.

Mark Gray: So there is a cultural change going on within academia. We are beginning to become more familiar with the notion of impact. And that I guess has driven perceptions of what impact needs to be for the REF? Is there a greater understanding do you think through those two REF cycles you talked about? Do you think that the feedback, for example, from the publication of case studies that are now available on the REF website has helped? Do you think that's improved literacy around impact?

Stephen Syrett: Yes, I think it has. I think, as is so often the case, the best way of understanding the impact agenda is to do it, to be involved in the process. The more individuals who have produced impact case studies and thought about the issues involved, the more understanding of this area. For me personally, my learning was in the very first REF where impact was there, and when I produced an impact case study around my own work and that forced me to think through the issues of what do we mean by impact, the story we're telling around it, the evidence, all of the issues around that. Learning through doing, as I think we all know, is the normally the best way of learning - so, the more individuals who have been through that process.

But of course, it's not just the REF where this is taking place. We may come and talk about this more later, but in terms of the role of different funders and different funding streams where there is a greater expectation or often a routine expectation that that's part of the agenda.

So it's not just about the REF; it reflects a broader shift toward demonstrating value for money – showing that publicly funded research is making a real difference and that we can show that it's making a difference.

Mark Gray: Absolutely. I hope we will get to that later, that wider reality of impact with funders and elsewhere. Just going back to the impact case studies that business and law produced for the last REF. How did you go about deciding on the very best-case studies of impact to offer to the REF? What did you look for in a good impact case study?

Stephen Syrett: It was very evolutionary. It's not that one day an impact case study falls fully formed from the sky - these things need to be worked on over a long period of time.

The process we went through involved identifying a wide range of potential impact case studies across different areas – where there was already impact, or there was evidence of growing impact - and then working with the individuals over a number of years (throughout the REF cycle) to see how they played out.

Then as we got closer to the actual REF submission date, we could identify the strongest in REF terms. A really important thing here is that the REF exercise defines impact in a particular way. It has certain requirements. It has its rules of the game. This means that there may be a project or an area of research which is producing some very important impacts, but doesn't quite fit in with the rules of the game, and therefore may not be something that we put forward.

It is very much an ongoing process - you never quite know which impact case studies will turn out to be the strongest. There are some examples which are very clear and very simple, but they are very rare. They're the exception.

In most areas, it's a body of work that's developing over time, and there are impacts developing, but we are not quite sure of the scale of that impact. REF talks about impact in terms of reach and significance, and sometimes there might be evidence of significance but not much reach. It varies. It evolves over time. So it's late on that you perhaps start to know for certain that these are our best-case studies. However, I would stress that that's very much in REF terms - what they are looking for, which is in a particular sort of context.

Mark Gray: And as you said, it's a process - it’s not something that happens in one instance. 

Just going back to regional significance: they are central, as you say, to REF’s interpretation of what impact means. When we first saw the guidance in 2014 - the first requirement for impact case studies - there was a lot of head-scratching about what precisely was meant by reach and significance.

Do you think we are clearer now having gone through two REF cycles about what those two things mean in the context of REF?

Stephen Syrett: Yes, I guess we have a better understanding now, but there's still always an element of uncertainty, depending on the nature of the research and the type of impact.

Sometimes it's very straightforward; in other areas, it is more complicated because a lot of research doesn't fit neatly into certain categories. Also, some things are easier to demonstrate than others. For example, significance - showing change within an organisation – might be quite straightforward, or it might be very difficult to evidence. Similarly, reach - being able to show that there has been an effect across a wide geographical area or multiple territories - can sometimes be quite straightforward, but not always.

So we understand that there's different dimensions to impact, and in that respect, it's useful to remember there isn't just one way of thinking about it. There are always issues around being clear about what impact is. It can be a bit of a slippery beast at times.

Mark Gray: Let’s now turn to the routes for demonstrating - or evidencing - impact. If I look at Business and Law's case studies from the last REF (REF 2021), I can see several instances where colleagues planned for REF as part of their research programme.

For example, in a really excellent case study on creating and growing social enterprises, the university ran open online courses for an amazing 50,000 entrepreneurs. This resulted in, and this is the impact element, 1,945 new social enterprise start-ups. Now, that's phenomenal. A phenomenal example of achieving impact (in this case) through training or CPD.

So, how do you choose the right routes to impact? Are there certain routes that make sense in the context of the faculty’s work? Are you trying all of them? What's your approach?

Stephen Syrett: I guess it's an element of horses for courses with these things, depending on what you are seeking to achieve through a particular stream of research work. Those objectives can vary and change over time. It is very much about seeing these things as a process, as we were talking about before, that evolves over time. At different points, certain courses of action may seem much more evident, more apparent, and more relevant than others.

So that's a conjuncture of events:  where the research is and at which point the body of research is moving forward. Normally, we are not talking about just one research project; we are often talking about a series of research projects taking place over a period of time So, where are we in that research journey?

Then there's also the external environment - the opportunity structures. There may be funding available to take something forward, or there may be an interest from a particular partner, and so on.

So, there's where the research is, but also what opportunities exist to take things forward. In that respect, what's needed is for the researchers involved and the research team to keep open minds, always thinking about opportunities and being agile in responding to them. There may be a moment in time to develop an online course - and this may be the moment. There may be other things you want to be doing all at the same time, like finishing off that paper or writing another bid.

You have to weigh those up and decide what's important. Responding to circumstances is important but having some sort of plan and understanding how the research is moving forward is equally important. Obviously, to run an online course you need to have certain outputs and an understanding of what needs to be in place, which has come from previous research. So, it may be that doing it earlier wouldn't have made as much sense, or the course might not have been as successful if it had been launched too soon, for example.

Mark Gray: Absolutely. Now, I suppose in generating impact like that, things don't always run smoothly, do they. There are bound to be issues connected with sustaining and generating impact. Any examples of difficulty in relation to generating impact?

Stephen Syrett: There are plenty of difficulties in generating impact – it’s certainly not a smooth journey. The most obvious examples are changes in politics and policy, changes in government. One moment your research and research findings are being sought and acted upon by government, and the next moment there's a change of government or there's a change of direction, and suddenly all your hard work appears to be being ignored.

The point I would stress is that it works both ways. Sometimes you may have a body of research pursued through an individual's commitment to that area and there hasn't been a lot of interest. Then, unexpectedly, you find that your research is of interest - such as during the last REF. One of our impact case studies was on unclaimed wages, including holiday pay that workers didn’t know they could claim. This area had been completely neglected. Nobody had shown any interest.

We had a dedicated researcher who identified the scale of these unclaimed wages, which collectively amounted to millions and millions of pounds, due to some changes within government at that time.

Perhaps to everyone's surprise, it became something the government was interested in, and as a result, it had an impact that wasn't anticipated - even though the work was worthy and robust. That change made all the difference. So, it's a double-edged sword that can go either way.

One point to make is: if you are committed to an area of research, keep focused, keep doing it, and you never know. If things go badly wrong and you stick around for two or three years, then who knows? Everything might change.

Mark Gray: Policy can frequently change.

Stephen Syrett: Yes. The other issue I would stress is the loss of key personnel - key individuals and key contacts within organisations - because for impact, you need relationships. You need relationships with different institutions, whether they are government departments, multinational corporations, or others.

Normally, those relationships are with a key person you have been working with and have a good relationship with. Then they leave the organisation, get promoted, or move to a different area, and the incoming person is less interested.

There is little you can do about that, other than following one of the first rules of impact: get your evidence and assemble it as you go along for that very reason. Because at a certain point you might think, ‘It will be very easy for me to evidence and talk about this area because person X will be there and he or she will say nice things, or help me with this’, and then they disappear - and all of a sudden you are not in that situation.

One of my pieces of advice, which I find myself repeating very often is: do it at that time If you've got that relationship, assemble as much evidence as you can. Get a testimony from that person while they are there, because in two years’ time, they may not be.

Mark Gray: Absolutely. People do move around, certainly in government, and also in industry. So much of the demonstration of the effect of research in science, for example, depends on senior scientists in industry staying in post, and very often those teams move around, don't they. This is the case, not just in the social sciences, I think across the board.

Stephen Syrett: I think it's across society more broadly as people are much more mobile, aren't they. I mean it's very rare to have the same person in the same job for many, many years.

Mark Gray: One of the nicest summaries of impact generation and development I know is Avril Horton's concept of impact as a story. It goes something like this: We - that's to say researchers - became interested in a particular issue, so we identified a problem connected with that issue. We told certain people outside of academia about our research. We entered into a dialogue that created or identified ways of being useful. Finally, the story shows how those insights were used and provides evidence of the resulting benefits.

I like that conception of impact as a story. But stories about impact aren't always as straightforward as that, are they? They're not necessarily linear in quite the way Avril Horton describes.

Stephen Syrett: No, that's very much the case, and again, one of the big challenges people struggle with is that individuals often want to tell a linear story – it’s something people are attracted to. 

The first thing to say is that I absolutely agree that a narrative arc is essential for a strong impact case study for REF. There needs to be a story to tell, but as you say, the story might be quite complicated. A lot of thought needs to go into how that story is constructed because it has got to be presented in a short period of time and fit into four or five pages ultimately - it's quite a challenge to do that.

As you say, the research process is very linear. Sometimes research leads to impact; sometimes impact leads to research. There are multiple loops in the whole process but there is recognition of that. However, you still need to navigate your way through these loops to create a coherent story. The other challenge for impact case studies is that it is entirely up to you what story you tell - where you start from and where you end up. REF doesn’t provide a fixed structure for the story.

Your starting point and how you bring together different elements of work into a narrative can be quite a creative process. Some of the best impact case studies are quite creative in terms of thinking across the piece.

For example, perhaps drawing together some different streams of work that have been going on within an institution might seem quite separate, but they may have started from similar places, from similar concerns, they may have, over time, gone off into different disciplines and different parts of the institution.

I can think of some of the work in our faculty that was around employment law. Some of that work went off into the law area and some of it stayed within the business area. However, a number of years later we can bring these strands back together.

Although they may have been published in different journals and addressed different audiences, as a combined body of work they speak across disciplines, and if you bring them together, they are much stronger than as individual pieces. That's where it can get quite complicated.

Mark Gray: In fact, I think this is right. Back in the preparation for REF 2014, we started describing research that had diverged - one down the law route, one down the business route - as having common features.

We started using concepts like employee voice as a way of bridging these two areas, while recognising that the impacts were connected to the same stream of work. It is often the case, I think, that this way of thinking about impact as a story works - although sometimes your story may not be linear. Nevertheless, you are trying to describe a process, and that process may be messy. It may be difficult. It may involve separate branches, but ultimately, we are trying to construct a picture that goes back to the notions of range and significance, which are fairly fundamental principles in thinking about impact itself.

I suppose we should now admit that REF isn't the only reason we are interested in impact. It is a concept widely used across the public and voluntary sectors, isn't it? For example, development funders regularly require evidence of planning for impact that is both immediate and longer term. Is it your sense that impact outside of the REF is vital for researchers to appreciate and understand?

Stephen Syrett: Yes, I think it is - absolutely. And you might say that should always have been the case. But the difference now is that it's increasingly a requirement for a strong researcher to be on top of this agenda and understand how their work fits into it.
 
In terms of moving forward, there is a danger with REF. It constructs a notion of impact and encourages people to talk about impact in a particular way. I spend a lot of time talking to people and saying, let's not be constrained by REF. Let's start with what really matters - research that is going to make a difference, research that is often challenge-orientated. Not all research has to be in that area, but a lot of research is - especially at an institution like Middlesex. That tends to be where the focus of research is and focusing on doing that.

A lot of the very strong impact case studies that we've submitted within Middlesex have their roots in work that began long before the REF and long before people talked about an impact case study agenda. They came from people who were committed to making a difference. Perhaps they were people interested in employment law and about the quality of workers' rights. They were committed to that as an issue and trying to advance that issue.

Then over a period of time through a body of work, they were able to make a difference because of their commitment to that area. I think it’s important not to start with the REF process itself, but with a commitment to research and wanting to make a difference. That's where it all starts from.

Increasingly, this commitment is also a requirement because of the way the institutions and funding streams are being set up. In the past, it may have been a choice for certain individuals who were naturally attracted to that approach. Now everyone has to think about it and how that fits in with their research.

Mark Gray: I think I mentioned the voluntary sector and the public sector. It's not just funders who expect you to demonstrate impact, as we said before. It's also partners in the work we do. Public agencies, public organisations, and third-sector organisations, routinely report on the impact of their work and the work of their partners - quite separate from REF. It's about showing, as you say, the utility and the value of the activities that have contributed to the work of all the organisations as a whole.

Stephen Syrett: Yes, and part of that is rooted in the whole areas of value for money. Virtually every organisation has to report to someone or other about how they are spending their money and show that they are making good use of it.

It's a positive thing for us as academic researchers that there is a shared conversation on this and sometimes individuals don't understand that. If you talk to lots of organisations saying that we need to demonstrate the impact of our research, they understand because they need to demonstrate the impact of what they do as well. So you do have a shared agenda there. There's a conversation that can be had and we can support each other in providing evidence both an organisation may need to demonstrate that a programme is operating, and academics need to demonstrate that their research matters. So, there is a basis for conversations which is increasingly understood across a wide range of institutions.

Mark Gray: I think that's true. I was just thinking back to some of my own work in the past. I used to be an economist in Whitehall working in the department of Culture, Media and Sport, where part of the narrative around value for money from investment in activities connected with the arts was strict value for money in investment appraisal terms.

In other words, you put some money in and got some public benefits out. But part of the narrative was very much allied to the notions we've said are connected with REF. Not necessarily with the broader agenda but certainly reach was important in the narrative you told about the significance of the investment. Did it have a reverberate effect? Did it have effects more broadly than just at the point of investment? I think across both the public sector and the third sector, there's certainly evidence of the use of impact.

I wonder if we can now turn to evidence and evidencing impact. How do you set about gathering evidence of impact?

Stephen Syrett: Well, that can be quite tricky. I guess we start with what is it that you are trying to evidence? What is it you want to demonstrate? Then you work back from that. So if you want to demonstrate that you've changed public attitudes on a particular topic, then what sort of evidence will you need to show that you've changed public attitudes on a particular topic?

Some of that may be quite obvious - for example, results from public surveys. Or it may be much more difficult to evidence because of the nature of what you are trying to show. It really comes down to: what are we trying to demonstrate here, and what are the best ways of demonstrating that?

That then leads you into are those options available? Are there existing surveys whose findings we could make use of? Do we need to do a piece of follow-up research? Do we need to do an impact appraisal - going back to individuals who attended a workshop to find out how they applied what they learned? Did they change their practice as a result of attending that workshop?

It's quite a difficult area, and there's always another question. There's also no end to it because whatever question you ask about impact, there's always the next one. For example, we delivered a report that was used by a government department - so what changed as a result? We held a number of workshops and people took that information away - so what did those individuals take away? Did anything change for their customers or the people on the ground? Did they change how they receive benefits, their attitudes, or their encounters with systems? The questions can go on and on.

So, one of the questions you have to ask is what are we trying to demonstrate? How far are we going to go down this road - because there are resource constraints: there's time, money, and energy. Also, if you keep going down, are you going to demonstrate anything significant? You do need to think about how far you want to go in a particular area, and where the strongest evidence lies.

One thing you often come back to is the use of testimonials, which can be important because certain areas are almost like black boxes. There are certain areas where it is very difficult for you to be able to say, ‘My research, or our research did this. It went into this organisation and things changed as a result’.

It is very difficult to capture that bit in the middle without getting testimonials from individuals who were in the room at the time - the meeting with the minister or the chief executive where your report was presented. You weren’t there in the room to hear the chief executive say, ‘Absolutely. That's a really cracking bit of insight. We’re going to change the…..’ Sometimes that only exists in the room at that time as a personal testimonial.

Other times, in the more formal world, it may be very clearly evidenced in a policy document that references the work of Mark Gray or whatever, and here's the report he produced. And you can say, ‘Well here is the evidence’. But of course, a lot of the real world doesn't work in that formal way of referencing reports.

Mark Gray: A part of the process of gathering evidence is that a lot of it comes down to having the confidence to frame queries to those who benefit from impact in a way that opens up as many opportunities as possible.

For example, in some of our past case studies, one of the areas, or aspects of impact, have been seemingly negative impacts - or at least, at first blush, they seem to be negative. So that research we've conducted has informed, say, policy and the work has suggested that it doesn't make sense to pursue a particular objective or close down options because it doesn't look as if it's a viable route. There's nothing wrong with that is there?

No, there's nothing wrong with ‘negative impact’, other than it’s often a more difficult story to tell and less compelling than a positive one - because everyone likes a good positive tale. But absolutely, that is impact. If a policy is discontinued because the research findings show that it doesn't work, that's a very definite impact. You just need to demonstrate it, perhaps in terms of savings or other outcomes. It is definitely part of the agenda, but it is more difficult to do.

Mark Gray: It certainly is. A question I suspect people listening to us will have in their heads, is that all that selecting routes to impact, planning it, executing it, gathering evidence (all the things we've talked about), sounds like a lot of work. Is it a lot of work?

Stephen Syrett: It can be a lot of work. A point I would emphasise is if it is incorporated into the planning and the organisation of the work from the start, it becomes a lot less, and less onerous because it's been designed into the work. That is very much the direction of travel now - good research often has impact engagement embedded from the beginning, because funders require it at the bid stage.

If you know from the beginning that you are going to have an external advisory panel, round tables with key stakeholders in your particular area, produce a blog, a policy brief, and documents for different audiences, then you know that you have planned for it. It doesn't mean it is less work per se, but it is less, it doesn't come as a surprise. It's not like, ‘Oh, I finished producing my excellent paper which I've sent off to my journal. Oh goodness, I've got to now write a blog’. From the beginning, you knew you were going to do both. That was always the intention. You knew that you were always going to have meetings with stakeholders as part of the process.

There’s no point in pretending that this is all easier, that it doesn't involve work. But if it's built into the process of the research, then it's much easier and it can be very satisfying and very enjoyable. I think a lot of researchers get a great deal from presenting their work to different audiences and seeing its utility - knowing that people find it interesting and useful.

Sometimes, talking to other academics, you might think you’ve been talking to these people for some time, so reaching out to other audiences can be challenging but rewarding. I would also point out that it doesn't have to be seen as an onerous extra; it can be something very satisfying and very rewarding. But it does need to be thought about and planned. Going back to the bid stage, when you are writing your bids, making sure that impact activities are properly funded and embedded. So when you get to it, you have got x number of days or weeks to do these activities funded through a project. Increasingly, funders expect to see this and will ensure that the proper resources are allocated. So that eases the burden to some extent.

Mark Gray: Now you mentioned something very interesting there. You talked about funders and funders approach to impact. You talked just now about incorporating impact into your bid, for example, to research funders. Until quite recently, many of the research funders (certainly UKRI) required us to set out in detail the intended, as the phrase was, pathways to impact. There's still a requirement that we think about impact isn't there in most research bids. How do we approach that? If this were my first bid and I was wrestling to understand how to engage with bidding itself, what advice would you give on framing my bid to take account of impact?

Stephen Syrett: I would focus on identifying who the other audiences are for this particular research work. Is it businesses, voluntary communities, organisations, policy sphere, or others, and then think about who this work is relevant to. How will you reach these individuals, and if you want those groups, those stakeholders should be aware of your work. How will you communicate to them? How will you reach them?

Don’t assume that your research will automatically reach them (something that we have all been guilty of in the past) because it’s a wonderful piece of research and everyone will read it. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's not the case, no matter how wonderful the work is.

So, when planning your research objectives and questions, think about the non-academic stakeholders, think about how you are going to reach them and what steps you will need to take to reach those different groups.

That may be quite straightforward, or in some cases that may be very, very difficult. It may be that it requires some considerable thought about how you will get this research into those groups. A very important thing these days is that there is a lot of talk about co-creation of research - increasingly with research agendas. Research agendas that are created entirely by academics on their own are less and less the case.

Working with some of those stakeholders from the outset in terms of the way the research is framed, you've got inbuilt impact there. They wanted something from the research in the first place, and the research was informed by an understanding of what other stakeholders want, not just what we might want to do to advance academic debate or develop certain theoretical constructs. The earlier impact is built into the process, the easier it becomes.

Mark Gray: So, having some sense of who the stakeholders are and how you reach them is something that you recommend if you are looking to submit a bid for research, or you are intending to work with an organisation externally, it's something you should have in mind?

Stephen Syrett: Yes. I would say it's essential that any bid these days includes stakeholder mapping - even if it's just to rule things out and say, well, no, this piece of research isn't trying to do this, that isn't what we are trying to do in this particular bid. However, if in this bid, we are making a claim that this research is going to change the way people think about digital marketing or something, then you've got to demonstrate how that's going to happen if that's impacting outside of the academic sphere.

It might be quite a short exercise, but it should always be done as part of that process -thinking about who the stakeholders are and who should be involved in the construction of the research from the beginning.

Lots of funders expect you to have letters of support from different organisations. So thinking about who you need letters of support from at the beginning is essential.

Mark Gray: Finally, you've been involved in assessing impact and thinking about which impact case studies go forward, and obviously also thinking about impact within the faculty as well as thinking about generating it yourself. What have you personally learned from the introduction of impact into the domain of research? Has it changed your practice? Has it changed the way you think about research? Has it changed the research you do yourself?

Stephen Syrett: Yes. Undoubtedly it has. The big challenge is that you need to think about an issue and a research agenda from different perspectives. I think that's what it encourages you to do. It makes you think about how different stakeholder groups view this issue. What are they interested in? And not just assume they are interested in what you are interested in. 

Also, greater engagement with external (non-academic) partners often brings difficult questions, fundamental questions, which perhaps within the academic bubble, we may take for granted or, we don't bother to ask the fundamental question. However, when you deal with a stakeholder, somebody from a business or a policy organisation, they can often ask some very direct and perhaps quite difficult questions where you think, hmm, I need to go back to that and force you to think through your research agenda. Is the research agenda correct? Are you asking the right question? So, I think in that respect, it can be very challenging and very rewarding.

As I said, learning to think about how you communicate. If you want to make change in a government department, how do you do that? It isn't just about producing the good research. You've got to think about how you get in the room, how you present your information in a way that can be digested and of interest to those organisations.

I would stress that that agenda is not for everyone, but for a lot of individuals it is very challenging. As I said, you can learn a lot from engaging with others and not being constrained by the academic life entirely.

Mark Gray: Thank you very much Stephen. That's been a very enjoyable conversation about impact. I think we've covered a lot. We've talked about REF style impact. We've talked about other forms of impact. We've talked about evidencing impact. We've talked about co-creation of research and how that relates to the impact agenda. We've covered a lot.

You can learn more about impact from the RKEO’s intranet pages, and there's also a microsite at mdximpact.wordpress.com (all lowercase). Lots of information there along with some tools to help you develop and curate evidence of impact.

Thank you for listening and look out for more podcasts from the RKEO.

Neelam Raina: Thank you very much for joining us for this podcast. 

This is a series of podcasts you've been listening to from Middlesex University, exploring the research we do here. You can find us on whichever platform you get your podcast from, and you can also find us on the research pages of Middlesex University, which is www.mdx.ac.uk/research.

All of our podcast episodes will be posted here for you to access for free. Thank you very much for joining us. 

Goodbye.