Impact through culture change webinars

Explore how to achieve impact through changing research culture and different engagement methodologies.

The Impact through Culture Change webinars (2020-2023) showcase diverse approaches and initiatives designed to enable research to create real-world impact. Each episode features a guest expert and concludes with an interactive Q&A session with the audience, offering practical insights, strategic perspectives, and real-world case studies.

To help you explore the series from different angles and revisit episodes that align with your work, the webinars have been grouped four thematic categories that highlight key areas of research impact practice and offer accessible entry points for researchers, professional staff and collaborators seeking to foster meaningful and lasting change.

Communicating impact and telling the story

Unlocking the challenge of writing audience-focused evidence-based impact narratives

Dr Giovanna de Moura Rocha Lima discusses the Researcher Impact Framework, a tool designed to support researchers in identifying, recognising and valuing the multiple activities of their scholarly life.

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Mastering the art of impact communication: a step-by-step approach

Dr Tamika Heiden, Founder of the Research Impact Academy, discusses strategies and tools for articulating impact. Learn to harness language, navigate indicators and evidence, and structure communication for compelling narratives.

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Beyond metrics: evaluating the emotional impact of art

Lesley Brook, Research Projects Coordinator at Otago Polytechnic, discusses the challenges of evidencing social impacts from art research, exploring types of evidence, evaluation methods, and her use of Q methodology and semi-structured interviews.

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Articulating the benefits of health research to collectively demonstrate impact

Jessica Glen, Senior Policy Analyst at the Health Research Council, speaks about how the introduction of research impact criteria has allowed articulation of the benefits of health research to collectively demonstrate impact for New Zealanders.

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Evidencing policy impact

Professor Mark Reed, CEO of Fast Track Impact, discusses frameworks and methods for evaluating and evidencing policy impacts, weaving through his own research, and presents a case study where policy impacts were both achieved and evidenced.

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Organisational culture and enabling impact

Build a healthy, impact literate culture; reflections on the challenges, opportunities and (ongoing) fascination with unicorns

Dr Julie Bayley, Director of Research Impact Development at the University of Lincoln (UK) discusses challenges, learnings, and opportunities from the REF, building an institutional impact culture, and her work on Impact Literacy and Institutional Health.

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One conversation at a time: embedding impact at La Trobe

Dr Wade Kelly, Senior Coordinator Research Impact at La Trobe University in Melbourne, explores how impact is being nurtured within La Trobe and reflects on successes and challenges in growing support for research impact.

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Impact networks drive impact culture change

Dr David Phipps, Assistant Vice President Research Strategy & Impact at York University in Canada, discusses how collaboration via networks can build institutional capacity for research impact.

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Embedding inclusive excellence into research and innovation culture

Dr Frances Downey, Head of Research & Innovation Culture at UKRI, discusses the growing momentum behind research and innovation culture in the UK, its global adoption, how it can be a tool for change, and interventions used to drive this transformation.

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Building capability for more impactful science across NZ’s Crown Research Institutions (CRIs)

Dr Kara Scally-Irvine, KSI Consulting, tells the story of the collaborative effort across NZ’s seven CRIs, building ‘evaluative’ capability across their organisations, and ‘turbocharging’ the impact of their work.

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Health, equity and community-led impact

A multifaceted approach to enabling research impact in child health

Ken Knight, Programme Lead, Knowledge Translation & Impact at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) Melbourne, discusses the award-winning organisational approach to enabling research impact at the Melbourne Children's campus.

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Treaty-based approach to creating impact

Dr Andrea Byrom and Melanie Mark-Shadbolt from the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge speak about aligning the expectations of individual researchers and their organisations to achieve collective impact.

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It takes heart: building a collaborative research centre to have maximum impact

Lisa Wong, Research Operations Manager for the Healthy Hearts for Aotearoa NZ CoRE, discusses efforts to enable engagement, equity and impact while establishing a centre of heart research at the University of Auckland (Manaaki Mānawa).

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Strategic approaches to societal impact

The role commercialisation can play in achieving societal impact

James Hutchinson, CEO of KiwiNet, highlights how commercialisation can drive societal impact by leveraging research to grow high-tech and knowledge-based sectors, fostering positive societal change, and boosting the economy.

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Engagement, impact, and the concept of a civic university webinar

Dr Kate Miller, Head of Civic Engagement at the University of Bristol, discusses implementing a new civic strategy, embedding public engagement in academia, and linking it to impact, knowledge exchange, and community engagement.

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Stretching the traditional view of research impact in Aotearoa

Professor Sally Devonport and Reece Moors from the Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge discuss building capacity in physical sciences and engineering and enabling the engagement across boundaries to maximize impact.

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Research impact seminars

Alongside our webinars, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland also hosted research impact seminars from leading international experts.

Has the tide turned towards responsible metrics in research?

Professor James Wilsdon, an international expert in research impact, on the opportunities and problems of research metrics.

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Fast track your impact

Professor Mark Reed, an international expert in research impact, on practical research impact tools.

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