Abstract

This article is a critical reflection on public engagement and the concept of impact in UK research institutions, based on a recent experience. The UK impact agenda, driven by the Research Excellence Framework (REF), requires researchers to engage with the public in order to potentially have an impact on society. This, I argue, constitutes the implicit directionality of impact as a one-way process. Recently, I provided a workshop for Flemish Sign Language (VGT) interpreters entitled ‘I interpret, therefore I am’ at the Faculty of Arts of the KU Leuven (Antwerp, Belgium). The aim of the workshop, in line with the impact agenda, was to increase participants’ awareness about the interpreting process and change their perception of how an interpreter’s personal beliefs potentially influence his/her linguistic choices. However, interacting with the participants also had an impact on my current research design and me as a researcher. This particular experience led me to reconsider the implicit idea of impact as a one-way process. In what follows I argue that, impact can and - in my opinion - should be a two-way process, encouraging interaction with the public in order to have a valuable impact on society, research and the researcher.

Highlights

  • This article is a critical reflection on public engagement and the concept of impact in UK research institutions, based on a recent experience

  • As a new and European scholar at the University of Warwick I have been introduced to the UK’s ‘impact agenda’ as part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), an evaluation system used to assess the quality of research carried out in UK higher education

  • Whereas the institutional discourse surrounding public engagement and impact mainly stresses the change research can initiate in non-academic society, this personal experience made me realise that impact can and should be a two-way process

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Summary

Isabelle Heyerick

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Impact in UK Academia
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