Going Nose to Tail in pursuit of research impact
I finally wrote a piece on going 'nose to tail' for research impact. And drew some new pictures - rattlesnakes. And did some training. And blogged.
One of the best jobs I ever had was in commissioning DFID’s research for governance, conflict, inclusion, and humanitarian. Great work, great team, great partners, crazy fun. My first and only HQ role after about 20 years overseas and three successive country postings on the bounce.
These ideas about research impact have been floating around for a decade - now written down and drawn.
The pictures (below) were a basis for some participatory training/ motivation/ collaboration workshops that Duncan Green and I did with/for SOAS, which then became a guest blog on Duncan’s new LSE Activism-Influence-Change.
Want the words and explanation? Read the blog! And Duncan’s blog which sets the scene (he is quick out of the blogs…).
My reflection:
What I love about this approach is that it is about re-finding the intrinsic motivation that led people to get into ‘development’ research in the first place, and harnessing this energy to change the world and communicate with passion and drive.
It’s not impact as some tedious logframe necessity, or a wrangle about causation and attribution.
As Naomi Hossain put it in her accompanying blog: research impact is for life , not just for (REF) funding.
Thank you to Naomi and Haben Abraha Hill for inviting us in and being such wonderful collaborators. I would say it was a ‘mojo dojo’ but (sadly) google tells me that this play on words has already been bagged.
Want to try it? Get in touch!
