Tagged / Mark Reed

Free research impact training from Fast Track Impact

BU research, Impact, policy, Research communication, Training

Free sessions from Fast Track Impact on preparing for REF2029, scoping an ethics of engagement and impact, integrating impact into your next funding bid and influencing policy. Book soon as some of these events only have a few spaces left.

Preparing for REF2029

Date: 5 February, 2024

Time: 10:00 – 13:00

This session will help you monitor, evaluate and evidence your impact.

​Key benefits:

  • Learn about evidence-based principles for delivering research impact when you don’t have much time
  • Discover easy and quick-to-use templates you can use immediately to:
    • Prioritise who to engage with first
    • Create a powerful impact plan that will guarantee your research makes a difference without wasting your time
  • Learn how to monitor, evaluate and evidence impact convincingly in your case study
  • Discover easy and quick-to-use tools to fix problems with significance or reach in case studies
  • Find out what makes a 4* impact case study, based on research into high versus low-scoring cases in REF2014 and a worked example showing the anatomy of a 4* claim from REF2021
  • Discuss impact plans that might develop into REF2028 case studies with colleagues

Scoping an ethics of engagement and impact

Date: 26 February, 2024

Time: 13:00 – 14:00

  • As governments and funders around the world invest in the impact of research as an unquestioned good, there are growing concerns around the ethics of pursuing impact.
  • Should University ethics committees consider engagement and impact plans for projects that are working on controversial topics or with vulnerable groups – even if their research doesn’t involve human subjects and so would not normally fall under their jurisdiction?
  • How should researchers and their institutions manage issues such as:
    • Undeclared conflicts of interest (e.g., arising from funding and promotion outcomes from the Research Excellence Framework in the UK)
    • Positive bias in the presentation of impacts (e.g. research leading to economic impacts via questionable ethical practices that also led to significant harm to the environment or human rights), and
    • Concerns about how vulnerable individuals and groups have been used to generate or corroborate impacts?​

Integrating impact into your next funding bid

Date: 20 May, 2024

Time: 10:00 – 12:00

Learn how to increase your success rates and integrate impact into your next research proposal

Key benefits:

  • Discuss insider tips and tricks, and get bid writing tools to help you co-produce your next proposal with the people most likely to benefit from your research. 
  • Discuss examples of impact sections from real cases for support 
  • Learn how to integrate impact convincingly with your proposal, using a mapping approach to ensure your impact goals map onto your impact problem statement, beneficiaries and impact generation activities, whilst managing risks and assumptions. 
  • Power all of this with a systematic stakeholder analysis and impact logic model that will make it easy to articulate specific and credible impacts.

Free training: Influencing policy

Date: 2 September, 2024

Time: 10:00 – 13:00

This session is based on research by Prof Reed and the latest evidence on how to get research evidence into policy.

​Key benefits:

  • Discover quick and easy tools you can use immediately to:
    • Prioritise which policy actors to engage with first and how to instantly get their attention
    • Create a powerful impact plan that will guarantee your research makes a difference without wasting your time
  • Discuss how to design an effective policy brief, infographic or presentation 
  • Learn how to get your research into policy, wherever you work in the world, by building trust and working with intermediaries 
  • Be inspired by primary research and case studies

Free training: The Productive Researcher

Date: 2 December, 2024

Time: 10:00 – 13:00

Find out how you can become significantly more productive as a researcher in a fraction of your current working day.

​Key benefits:

  • Leave with practical tools you can use immediately to prioritise limited time to achieve more ambitious career goals
  • Gain a deeper understanding of the values that underpin your work, and the reasons why you feel time pressured
  • Identify priorities that are as much about being as they are about doing, and that are stretching, motivational, authentic, relational and tailored to your unique strengths and abilities
  • Turn these into an “experiment” to make practical changes that create a positive feedback loop between your priorities and your motivation, so you can become increasingly focussed and productive

Influencing Policy Workshop with Professor Mark Reed

BU research, ECR Network, Impact, parliament, policy, Research communication, Research Training, RKE development framework, Training

If you would like your research to have an impact on government policy, or would like to influence the policy of large organisations, then this half day workshop by impact expert, Professor Mark Reed, of Fast Track Impact, is for you.

This online half-day workshop is open to all academics and there are limited places, so book via OD now! Once booked, you will be sent a Zoom link to join the session nearer the time.

The workshop is running on 1st March from 13:00-16:30 and places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

During this workshop, you will discover quick and easy tools you can use immediately to:

  • Prioritise which policy actors to engage with first and how to instantly get their attention.
  • Create a powerful impact plan that will guarantee your research makes a difference without wasting your time.
  • Learn how to design an effective policy brief.
  • Pitch evidence-based policy options powerfully in meetings and seminars.
  • Learn how to get your research into policy, wherever you work in the world, by building trust and working with intermediaries.
  • Track, evaluate and evidence policy impacts, discovering time-efficient ways to keep track of impacts as they arise, and design an impact evaluation that convincingly attributes impacts to your research.
  • Be inspired by primary research and case studies that illustrate each point.

For more information, please contact Amanda Lazar.

 

 

 

International development for impact – workshop spaces available

BU Challenges, Events, Research Training, RKE development framework, Training

On both 1st and 22nd August 2018, Prof Mark Reed will be delivering a one-day workshop to introduce potential applicants to the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and how to approach applications to the this £1.5 billion UK government fund.

To reserve your place, BU academics should contact Rhyannan Hurst, stating on which date you wish to attend.

Please note that reservations are first come, first served and must be sent to Rhyannan by 17:00 on Friday, 27th July.

Benefits:

  • Get advice on how to write a fundable Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) proposal from a former GCRF panelist
  • Explore evidence-based principles to underpin the development of GCRF impact summaries, pathways to impact, ODA statements and Theories of Change
  • Learn how to use tools for identifying international partners, stakeholders and publics, and identifying potential impacts, showing how a Theory of Change can be constructed from the bottom-up, based on impact goals identified in-country
  • Discover tools that can enable GCRF teams to evaluate planned impacts as well as tracking opportunistic impacts as they arise
  • Learn how to get your research into policy, wherever you work in the world, by building trust, working with intermediaries and designing effective policy briefs that you can use with the people you come into relationship with

The training is based on the latest research evidence and takes a unique relational approach to deliver wide-reaching and lasting impacts. As part of the session you will receive a free copy of Prof Reed’s acclaimed book, The Research Impact Handbook for future reference.

After the workshop, you are invited to an optional free follow-up programme over five weeks, so you can apply what you have learned. You can work through these steps yourself from the handbook, but by signing up to take these steps online, you get access to extra material. Each step consist of a 6 minute video with accompanying text and tasks. Prof Reed continues to answer your questions via email after the course, and works with the training organiser to provide more in-depth support for selected participants (via up to two one hour individual consultations by phone or Skype and written feedback on your work).

See Fast Track Impact’s resources for GCRF applicants and their blog on how to write a fundable GCRF proposal.  Find out more about the fund and the open calls on the UK Research and innovation website for this scheme.

 

About the trainer

Prof Mark Reed is a recognised international expert in impact research with >150 publications and >12,000 citations. He holds a Research England and N8 funded chair at Newcastle University, is research lead for an international charity and has won two Research Council prizes for the impact of his research. His work has been funded by ESRC, NERC, AHRC and BBSRC, and he regularly collaborates and publishes with scholars from the arts and humanities to physical sciences. He regularly sits on funding panels and reviews programmes of research for the Research Councils.

He has run workshops to help researchers prepare for GCRF funding across the UK in collaboration with the Research Councils, the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS) and the N8 Research Partnership. He worked with cattle herders in the Kalahari for his PhD and since then has done research funded by the EU, British Academy and the United Nations with marginal agricultural communities across the developing world. His most recent book, published by Routledge is based on his work for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

He has been commissioned to write reports and talk to international policy conferences by the United Nations and has been a science advisor to the BBC. Mark provides training and advice to Universities, research funders, NGOs and policy-makers internationally, and regularly works with business. Find out more about his work at: www.profmarkreed.com or follow him on Twitter @profmarkreed

Fast Track Impact is an international training company working in the Higher Education and research and innovation sectors. Our mission is to change the way researchers generate and share knowledge, so that their ideas can change the world.

What people are saying about this course:

A selection of quotes from feedback forms:

“I liked the group discussion as well as the depth and breadth of the information given on GCRF.”

“The discussion about impact and GCRF was particularly useful, with practical stakeholder engagement tools and tips.”

“Advice and insights into fundable impact-oriented research”

 “I will change the way I write impact summaries and pathways to impact in future GCRF proposals.”

 “I will change how I plan to influence policy change through GCRF funded research.”

 “I’ve learned how to be strategic [about impact] and ask myself self hard questions.” 

  “Great practical tips.  Overall much to take away both theoretically and practically.”

“Wonderfully insightful, useful and energising.”