Beyond the frame: hard-to-assess research–impact nexuses in the social sciences and the humanities

Book section : Chapter

This chapter signposts some important areas of impact that are generative and valued within academic communities but may be difficult to compress into the time-frames, contributory claims, and material evidence of benefit that are often associated with impact narratives that were ‘optimized’ for assessment purposes – such as those of the United Kingdom’s Research Excellence Framework (REF). I describe these nexuses through several features, which go beyond the inherent ambiguity and constructedness of impact as an object of assessment. They are domains where it is difficult to make a distinction or a demarcation between research itself, practice, and research impacts; where there is a potential conflict between the aims and the values that underpin specific modes of research, and the more mainstream or top-down understandings of reach and significance that underpin the methods, indicators and metrics for assessing impact; and also where there is a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity around the distinction between pathways to impact and actual impacts. These hard-to-assess domains are relational, dynamic and synergetic; they have been and continue to be very difficult, if not impossible, to capture within the technical definitions and institutional frames that we have for assessing research impact, particularly as part of performance-based funding exercises. Such research-impact nexuses include: the critical, emancipatory, and subversive research-impact nexus; the discursive and conceptual research-impact nexus; the collective, reciprocal and deeply collaborative research-impact nexus; the creative, craft and design-based research-impact nexus; and the professionally-oriented and practice-based research-impact nexus. Fitting them into assessment templates that expect separate accounts of research, pathways to impact, and impact, is often an exercise in artificial and instrumental re-storying that may be at odds with the understandings and values of those involved in this work.

Authors: Oancea, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Edward Elgar
• Host title: Accountability in Academic Life: European Perspectives on Societal Impact Evaluation
• Pages: 51-59
• Chapter number: 4
• Place of publication: Cheltenham
• Publication date: 2023-11-10
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.4337/9781800885738.00011
• EISBN: 9781800885738
• ISBN: 9781800885721
• Language: English
• Keywords: research assessment; arts and humanities; collaborative research; practice-based research; social sciences; design-based research; critical research; impact
• Subtype: Chapter