The messy business of impact for the social sciences: fear and failure, stealth and seeds

Flinders, Matthew (2018) The messy business of impact for the social sciences: fear and failure, stealth and seeds. Impact of Social Sciences Blog (21 Sep 2018). Website.

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Abstract

Failure is an inevitable part of any academic career. This may feel especially true for those researchers working to have an impact on politics and policy, with research work always vulnerable to rejection or disregard. Matthew Flinders explains how such precarity brings into sharp focus the messy business of impact for the social sciences: the great problem of sowing seeds in a political context is you can never be absolutely sure they will germinate. This situation carries the risk of decisions regarding the investment of institutional resources being taken with an eye not on the intellectual vibrancy of a project or the need to cultivate a culture of engaged scholarship but on a short-term calculation as to whether the outlay is likely to deliver a high-quality impact case study.

Item Type:	Online resource (Website)
Official URL:	http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018...
Additional Information:	© 2018 The Author
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
Date Deposited:	14 Jan 2019 14:16
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 06:56
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/91755

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