More on research uptake and multiple forms of knowing - a conversation at a railway station
The meeting at Patisserie Valerie at Kings Cross Station with an old friend from academia, was very different to the meeting in the park that was the subject of my last blog. She is finding this emphasis on impact and research uptake quite positive because it is giving her “applied research” a lot more credence and validity in academic circles. We had an interesting conversation on “impact and uptake”, mainly recognising that judging impact merely via “uptake” could imply a level of arrogance that is not clearly in the spirit of independent research, and is more an outcome of advocacy than knowledge creation. What we need to show as impact is that decision-makers have taken our research into account and have considered it when making their decisions, though other factors may sway their decision-making in a different direction. My friend seemed to think that it is a matter of time: that piling up a sufficient body of evidence and communicating it to...