Abstract: Mentioning ‘impact’ in a room full of researchers, while perhaps not guaranteeing panic, usually results in a flavoursome series of discussions. Add to this pressure from public agencies to justify taxpayers’ investments in research, and a perennial challenge of how to ensure society has a meaningful role in the delivery of science, and you have the makings of a richly-fruited challenge. Research funding organisations – as custodians of public investments in research – clearly have a role to play in addressing this challenge. Many are shouting ‘impact’, but few are taking a methodical approach to explore what impact means to their wider constituents. Fewer still are reflecting and reporting on these explorations in a transparent and open fashion. This talk will provide a fly-by account of efforts undertaken by one of the UK’s major public funders of health and care research, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), to cast its net wide when considering its role in funding research for impact. Told through the lens of a researcher-in-residence working within NIHR’s nascent impact team, it promises to serve up slices of ‘what works’ from four funders taking a cooperative approach to impact. While not promising the ultimate answer (nor, even, the ultimate question) to the meaning of impact, it ought to provide several beacons – and the occasional warning foghorn – to help those charting a course towards a more enlightened approach to impact, on behalf of their organisations.

Biography: Adam Kamenetzky is a Research Fellow at the Policy Institute at King’s College London and Researcher-in-Residence at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)’s Central Commissioning Facility. His early work as a science communicator in the not-for-profit sector prompted questions around whose research story could/should/ought to be told. This led to his interest in the emerging field of ‘science of science’ as a methodical series of approaches to explore research policies and practices. His research residency with NIHR focuses on questions around how it supports, assesses and evidences impact.