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Building Impact into Social Science Research was funded by vitae innovate fund applied for and successfully awarded to Professor Richard Thorpe and Dr Paul Ellwood. The event was supported by the Staff and Departmental Development Unit at Leeds. Much of the following text formed part of a proposal to Vitae written by Paul Ellwood and Richard Thorpe, with summary and context written by Jenn Chubb at the University of York. This Vitae Innovate funded project enabled the development of a module to be integrated into postgraduate training programmes – it contained both concepts and practical tools aimed at helping students understand and connect with aspects related to the impact of social science research. The Innovate fund supported a two day Leeds University Business School course entitled Building Impact into Social Science Research followed by a two day Social Science- wide White Rose residential event at Bodington Hall with input from academics reporting on the impact of their research and interactive group work activities. Building Impact into Social Science Research aimed to provide an introduction to this increasingly important aspect of a researcher’s life. Through a mixture of presentations, specialist speakers and practical exercises, the workshop provided a grounding in the emerging UK policy environment, appropriate research design and practical engagement mechanisms with research stakeholders.

The Social Media sessions demonstrated a successful integration of a student-led initiative within a formal graduate training provision. The initiative underlined the importance of engaging PhD students in their own learning and training needs, in both sharing expertise with peers and in contributing to their own professional development. In doing so, it demonstrated to other postgraduate researchers how they might utilise their own areas of expertise to develop further student-led initiatives.

Open competition to fund projects relating to research staff development

The Jubilee Graduate Centre (JGC) has been exclusively developed for postgraduate students and early career researchers. It works closely with Schools on the Jubilee Campus to develop Faculty-specific training and careers events for PGRs/ECRs focusing on transferable skills, and which reflect the requirements of the Funding Councils.

In this 3 hour session, we invited an expert panel comprising journal editors, funders, academics, journalist and a science communication charity to discuss peer review with our PhD students and postdoc - looking at peer review from the academic community’s point of view and how the public gauges if scientific evidence is robust or not.

Programme of workshops available to research staff, mapped to Loughborough Skills Statements and Concordat Principles

This is a student led project which aims to bring together researchers from different disciplines to discuss the use of new media technologies.