Empowering creative academics for greater impact

IADT wanted to strengthen its research culture and enhance the ability of its academics to generate meaningful, real-world impact. With staff working across creative industries, humanities, design, media, and technology, there was a clear need to build skills for external engagement, communicate research to wider audiences, and embed impact thinking into research processes from the outset. The goal was to empower ambitious academics at different career stages to design research with societal value, engage stakeholders proactively, and maximise outcomes beyond traditional academic measures such as publications.

UIIN delivered the Impactful Researchers Program, a six-month professional development experience tailored to the creative and interdisciplinary context of IADT.

The program combined interactive workshops, expert-led sessions, and peer-based learning to explore what it means to take an “impact first” approach to research. It equipped participants with practical tools and frameworks to plan, communicate, and deliver impact across academic, cultural, and societal dimensions.

Key topics included:

• Setting up for impactful research – foundations, frameworks, and beneficiaries.
• Impact mindset – thinking and acting like an impactful academic.
• Setting up for external engagement success – understanding collaboration ecosystems.
• Developing an external engagement strategy – mapping value propositions for partners.
• Valorisation pathways – diverse routes for impact creation in creative and STEM fields.
• Communicating research and its impact – tailoring messages for different audiences.
• Building a personal research brand – increasing visibility and authenticity as an impactful researcher.

UIIN crafted a holistic learning journey centered on application and reflection, where interactive sessions blended frameworks, real-life case examples, and group discussions. Participants had an opportunity to apply practical tools to develop their own Pathways to Impact during six-month journey. Cross-disciplinary collaboration fostered the exchange of ideas, enabling participants to create solutions that transcended disciplinary boundaries.

The participants were equipped and empowered to:

• Differentiate between academic and societal, cultural, and environmental outcomes and impact.
• Plan research with an “impact-first” perspective, using structured models such as the logic model.
• Engage stakeholders early in the research process and co-create value throughout.
• Communicate research effectively to funders, collaborators, and non-specialist audiences.
• Identify and leverage valorisation pathways relevant to creative, STEM, and social science disciplines.
• Build a personal research brand, enhancing visibility and career opportunities.

This program has built a foundation for a growing culture of impact at IADT, supporting its ambition to make research outcomes visible and valuable to industry, cultural sectors, and society. The participants left not only with practical strategies and tools but also with renewed confidence and vision to lead impactful research that reflects IADT’s unique interdisciplinary strengths.

Marie O’Neill, Professional Research Systems Officer and librarian at IADT, applied insights from the Impactful Researchers Program to overhaul the university’s approach to capturing research impact in its Pure system—the platform used for registering research outputs and publications. Before the course, the system only offered broad categories such as “societal” and “cultural” impact. Inspired by the course’s comprehensive impact model, Marie introduced more specific categories, including political, educational, technological, and health impact, enabling faculty to more accurately categorize their work.

Marie also activated the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) function in Pure and expanded the available categories within the impact section to better capture the wide range of contributions made by IADT researchers. After further reflection during the course and a national Pure user group meeting, she decided to disable citation counts on the front end of the system, shifting the focus from traditional citation metrics to more meaningful, qualitative measures of impact.

Her actions not only enhanced the functionality of the Pure system but also prompted a broader reflection at IADT about how research impact is captured. For Marie, the course provided both practical tools and the confidence to implement lasting changes, helping faculty articulate the broader significance of their research and align it with more comprehensive, real-world measures of impact.