In this guest blog post from UW’s Research Impact Officer, Katie Harris, we hope to make colleagues aware of new guidance from the Research, Innovation and Impact Office (RIIO) around the representation of impact required in applications to specific funders.
This guidance is located on the RIIO SharePoint hub and covers expectations around how the following should be represented:
Academic Impact
This is how your project contributes to world-leading research and advances knowledge and understanding within the academy, including advances in method, theory and application of knowledge across and within disciplines. In some cases, academic impact may include the frequency with which research is picked up and utilised by other researchers and scholars.
Research Impact
This refers to the wider demonstrable change or benefits to potential beneficiaries and users (stakeholders). In many cases, funding applications require detail on communication, engagement and impact generating activities as well as opportunities for policy change. Applicants should consider relevant contextual, societal and cultural differences in stakeholder groups as appropriate when designing engagement and dissemination activities, outreach strategies, and resources.
Career Development
Some funding schemes covered in the guidance also require career impacts for the researcher and/or career developments for members of the project team. For example, opportunities such as the ESRC New Investigator Grant (see below) require a programme of skills development for the new investigator to be included in the bid, with further consideration as to how the project can support the career development of others employed through the grant.
The guidance covers the following funders:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
- Catalyst Awards: support researchers without prior experience of leading a significant research project to accelerate their trajectory towards research independence
- Curiosity Awards: flexible awards for fundamental research that leads to new research agendas, networking activity and idea generation, enabling the development of further research opportunities and agendas
- Standard Research Grants: funding to support well-defined collaborative projects across the Arts and Humanities
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
- New Investigator Grants: support researchers at the start of their careers to become independent researchers through experience of managing and leading research projects and teams
- Standard Research Grants: fund researcher-driven basic, applied, and strategic research from any disciplines and on any topics in ESRC’s remit
National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)
NIHR’s various funding programmes cover a diverse range of research areas, project scales and career stages. They are particularly interested in receiving high quality applications in response to areas of research interest identified by Department of Health and Social Care, and this guidance offers a generalised overview of preferred plans for knowledge mobilisation, dissemination, and impact in your application.
If you would like assistance with capturing your potential impacts within a funding application, please contact RIIO via email on researchoffice@worc.ac.uk