“Impactful research.” Does that sound like anti-intellectual filth to the academic ear?

As Eileen Fischer, York University, pointed out in the panel she and Linda Tuncay led at ACR Asia Pacific 2024 about doing impactful research, if asking us to demonstrate the impact of our research is an anti-intellectual stance, then we have to ask ourselves:

How much impact is going to count as enough impact?

Daiane Scaraboto, University of Melbourne and an organizer of this conference, addressed the most pertinent issues about the idea of impact: first, let’s de-conflate “engagement” and “impact”; second, let’s think about the shift in our roles: we entered the profession driven by curiosity and a desire to understand, but now we are expected to produce work that has a measurable impact; and third, since it takes at least 10 to 12 years to measure the impact of your work, we need to consider how we can translate that into metrics that then affect tenure and promotion – in other words, people’s jobs and livelihoods?

Lucie Ozanne, University of Canterbury, shared her insights about how collaborations with certain people and networks helped her create wider impact. She often worked with community organizations and bodies who had wide networks and access to policymakers. They were instrumental in putting her work in front of these policymakers; thus, her research gained visibility among decision-makers, enhancing its potential impact.

Linda Tuncay, Loyola University Chicago, also brought to the fore the problem of putting academics, who have no media training, in the media spotlight, and simply hoping that things don’t go sideways. Alison Joubert, University of Adelaide, added that it took time to create social media posts and “content”.

To which one member of the audience very astutely suggested that it shouldn’t be up to the individual academics to do the work of disseminating their research. That it should be the responsibility of the university’s PR arm / marketing department to talk about the research.

Here, I chose not to interject for fear of leading the discussion astray. But the bald truth is that universities would be doing more of that if only the people working in these departments understood what was being written.

I was contacted by a newly instituted marketing / PR department of a b-school to ask if I could train their staff to read and understand what the professors were publishing. If marketers cannot understand the product, how can they market it?

I don’t want to bring it all back to writing. I really don’t. But I don’t see how we can escape it.

Unless we all just decided to dance our PhD, or turn our research into comics, as Pierre Yann Dolbec, Concordia, suggested one of his colleagues, Joel Bothello, was doing. 

[And here’s the 2024 winner of the dance your PhD contest. ENJOY!]