Using Experience and Expertise to Bring Change

Making the best of limited resources

The university has a number of people in a wide range of roles supporting research impact—from REF case studies, and building evidence to show impact. The Impact and Research Development Managers help researchers write their applications and identify activities they can undertake to achieve impact. The Public Engagement Unit nurtures a positive culture of high-quality public engagement with research. The Institute for Mathematical Innovation helps industry understand the value of mathematics in addressing their problems. There’s also an Institute for Policy Research supporting engagement with policymakers. The press team plans media coverage of research and tracks mentions in press articles. They also have a research information system at the university, called Pure, which is used by the researchers to record impact.

Each academic department has an impact director, whose job is to support researchers in thinking about impact as part of their research, including offering guidance around impact funding and signposting to appropriate professional services staff. The RIS team has also created a network of impact directors to facilitate the sharing of best practices across the university. McKen describes this as “making the best of limited resources and maximizing shared learning and shared expertise.” She considers impact as a university-wide collaboration and believes it’s the only way it can work.

Building excitement around impact

McKen says that putting together an REF submission is challenging work. McKen was a panel advisor after REF 2014, an experience she really enjoyed. She worked with the panels doing the assessment for about a year. She wanted to bring that experience and learning back to Bath for REF 2021 and wants to create a strong support infrastructure for researchers. “Our academics are under tremendous pressure to be brilliant teachers, fantastic researchers, superb administrators, and have impact. My team is trying to take some of that pressure off them and make the REF elements easier. It is a massive exercise. I hope we’re sort of taking some of the pain out of that by giving them that support. That’s why I enjoy the job,” McKen says.

How public relations and impact is different, and tracking change on the ground

McKen worked on a couple of public engagement-type case studies last year. She says that those can be the most challenging because it’s very difficult to show impact. Some of the researchers at the university are very prolific and engage with the media quite often. But, according to McKen, impact is how you demonstrate that something has changed.

McKen gives another example of a study on working with groups that support families affected by terrorist attacks. Initially, the evidence of change was limited and focused on media coverage rather than what was different. McKen and her team worked with the academic over a number of months and together were able to build a strong case study. They were able to show that some of these support groups changed the way they were working with families because of the academic’s work with them.

McKen feels that public engagement has a very important role in achieving impact. But collecting evidence to show that it has made a difference is difficult.

Research culture change thanks to REF

The university runs a training program for all new lecturers at the university. It covers everything from PhD supervision to teaching. It includes a session about impact as part of that research and training element. But the biggest change McKen has seen is with people’s awareness about what research impact is and what it means. “It’s really important that people don’t think that everybody has to have a REF impact case study and that impact needs to be achieved tomorrow,” McKen says.

She adds, “We would like everybody to think about the potential impact of their research—Why are you doing it? What’s the problem? What’s the real-world challenge you’re trying to address? The impact might be seen 50 years down the line, and that’s okay. But it’s important to consider these points. You may actually improve your research, because you can engage stakeholders earlier on that might lead to changes in the research questions or people you can get on and a project steering group.”

KATY MCKEN

Katy McKen is Head of Research Information and Impact. She is responsible for making sure information about the university’s research is accurate, accessible, and effectively used. Katy also leads the operational planning and program management of the university’s submissions to national assessments of research and enterprise. These include REF 2014 and the Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (HEBCIS). Before joining the Research and Innovation Services (RIS) department, Katy was the Centre Manager at the Centre for Research in Strategic Purchasing and Supply (CRiSPS) in the School of Management. She managed the Centre’s portfolio of research and education. In 2014, Katy was seconded to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as Panel Advisor for REF 2014’s assessment phase.