Abstract
The article discusses debates around the new ‘impact’ agenda in the UK context as driven by Higher Education Funding bodies and Research Councils UK (RCUK), which are jointly responsible for allocating governmental funding to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and individual research projects. The ‘impact agenda’ is defined here as the whole gamut of initiatives related to knowledge exchange and public engagement that have been articulated in recent years, particularly since the Research Excellence Framework (REF, 2008–2013) introduced new criteria of assessing the research conducted within UK HEIs. The REF has made an explicit engagement with this agenda virtually compulsory for research-active academics by introducing ‘impact’ as a new criterion on which the research performance of universities, departments and individual researchers is assessed. The new emphasis on impact, defined as the ‘demonstrable contribution’ that research makes ‘to society and the economy’1 beyond specialist academic audiences, has generated much discussion and controversy among academics.
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© 2014 Francesca Stella
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Stella, F. (2014). Engaging with ‘Impact’ Agendas? Reflections on Storytelling as Knowledge Exchange. In: Taylor, Y. (eds) The Entrepreneurial University. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137275875_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137275875_7
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