EPSRC IAA Impact Festival 2022
Tuesday, 22 March 2022, at The Studio, Glasgow
Following the success of the previous editions, the 2022 EPSRC IAA Impact Festival took place on 22 March 2022 in Glasgow. It was organised by five Scottish Universities holding EPSRC Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAA’s): the Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde.
The 2022 edition of the Impact Festival was again primarily aimed at early and mid-career researchers and focused on
- building impact awareness and knowledge within our academic communities
- responsible Innovation, Equality Diversity and Inclusion, and Sustainability
- routes to impact.
The festival is designed to support engagement with external partners and expand collaborative working, leading to impact between researchers, academics, industry, charities, and government. More than 70 delegates from across the five participating universities attended.
The day comprised of plenary sessions with speakers from both industry and public bodies and three 60-minute workshop sessions which covered
- researcher development
- developing future Impact Leaders
- creating and developing networks between our institutions to encourage collaborations that will drive impact.
The festival also featured an Impact Gallery with a mix of exhibits, posters, demonstrations and sponsors. The Impact Gallery showcased outputs and impact from EPSRC and IAA funded projects.
An Impact Festival attendee said:
“The Impact Festival was brilliant. I took pages and pages of notes, full of good ideas about how to engage with a huge range of audiences, how to properly plan impact right from the conception of a project, how to ensure our project partners get as much out of knowledge exchange as we academics do, how to think and reflect about what ‘success’ looks like in KE and impact, how to ask effective questions and to effectively identify problems that need to be solved (as opposed to just identifying ‘gaps in the academic literature’!), how to maximise the scope and benefit of both inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary research, and how to use innovative analogies and other techniques to communicate complex ideas simply.”
For further information about the IAA Impact Festival please contact Keith Dingwall
