Impact Workshop (23): How research4impact builds relationships between scholars and practitioners

Abstract:

Founded in 2017, research4impact connects social scientists and practitioners to learn from and alongside each other. Our key premise is that the barriers to more impactful research are often relational rather than informational. Thus, research4impact has developed a matchmaking methodology in order to strategically connect scholars and practitioners. In some cases, they engage in short, personalised conversations in which scholars apply existing research to help solve a problem that practitioners are facing. In other cases, they embark on a research collaboration together in order to answer a question of mutual interest.

In this workshop I’ll describe research4impact — its vision, successes, and challenges so far — as well as its innovative matchmaking methodology. I will also discuss some of the concrete ways in which our matches have affected how problems get solved and decisions get made outside academia.

About the Speaker:

Adam Seth Levine is an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University. He studies civic engagement. He is the author of several papers as well as a book entitled American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction, published by Princeton University Press in 2015. That book won the 2016 best book award from the American Political Science Association for a book using experimental methods to answer a substantively important question. In addition, in 2011 he won the E.E. Schattschneider award for the best dissertation on the study of American government. Finally, he is also the president and co-founder of research4impact, a nonprofit founded in 2017 that connects scholars and practitioners in order to solve important problems and answer meaningful questions.

Background on the Workshops:

Impact beyond the academia is a key element of the University's knowledge exchange (KE) strategy. Furthermore, Impact will become an element of assessment in the UGC RAE 2020, carrying a weighting of 15%. The UK experience in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 indicates that it is important to collect evidence of such impacts.

The Knowledge Exchange Office is organising workshops to be conducted by researchers who have hands-on experience in preparing impact statements and impact case studies for the UK REF 2014 or research councils overseas. The workshops will be of interest not only to colleagues who want to maximise the impact of their research, but also to those who coordinate research developments and research assessment in Faculties.