The First Lady of Research Impact

Diverse backgrounds add value

Jo Lakey explained that King’s College does not have an impact office. Lakey manages a team of five impact leads who work with the faculties and departments to get the impact case studies prepared. They are also responsible for making sure people are aware of impact and for putting together training and making resources, including a helpful website, available to people.

The team is made up of people from diverse backgrounds—from biological sciences to arts and humanities. Two people have a PhD and have worked as postdocs. “I think having a doctorate can give them an academic credibility and it means they already speak the language of research,” Lakey says. The work experience helps as well. One of the team members has been working for a company that makes an impact tracker software and has a thorough understanding of the technical aspects of building a case study and evidencing. Another had been working in the fundraising team at King’s College and came with a lot of experience in talking to academics about what they’ve been doing. One person worked in museums as a science communicator and is very experienced at public engagement. “We don’t hire people based on their subject area—at least we never thought of using that as a criterion—but they do need to have some experience in research support,” Lakey clarifies.

Changing the “I-don’t-have-impact” attitude

Lakey was a part of the REF pilot while at Brunel University London. Once the pilot was over and it was decided that impact assessment was going to be included in REF2014, Lakey and her colleagues spent a lot of time educating people about it. “Nobody knew what it meant,” Lakey says. “We had many information sessions in the university, talking to the different faculties, schools, and academics and explained what it was, what it meant, how it worked.”

Almost everybody that Lakey talked to initially thought that their research didn’t have an impact and hence had nothing for an impact case study. “It’s only when we started discussing their research did we realize that it had some impact. They are just not thinking about it in those terms,” Lakey says. Some researchers also argued that it was difficult to measure impact in their discipline. Helping the researchers understand that they need to actively think about impact was a challenge that Lakey and her team had to face.

Keeping a record of impact  

Lakey tells us about one impact case study she encountered at the Institute of Education, where she worked in 2013. Since the beginning of the project, the research team had kept every single piece of paper on the impact the research had. “They had news articles, testimonials, letters, copies of policy documents that cited them, and a huge stack of evidence! This made it easy to put together the case study. It’s great when someone has kept a track of things!” Lakey says enthusiastically.

Lakey has also encountered scenarios where the researcher is aware that the research has made an impact but hasn’t kept a track of anything and has no evidence whatsoever. “You can’t tell what kind of impact the research has had after the paper got published. But I’m pretty sure that that it has had some impact,” Lakey says.

JO LAKEY

Jo Lakey is REF Delivery Director at King’s College London, where she is responsible for ensuring that all REF submissions are thorough and ready by the deadline.  She completed her MBA in Higher Education Management from the UCL Institute of Education in London in 2010. In the last 17 years, she has acquired extensive experience working in higher education and, more specifically, in research impact. She spent around 3 years as Research Impact Manager in Brunel University London. Her expertise lies in Research, Higher Education Policy and Governance, Academic Administration, Staff Development, and Data Analysis.

This article is a part of ScienceTalks Magazine issue Making Research Impact Exciting: What Universities Can Learn from REF 2014.