So, my secondment has come to an end (*sobs*). For those who don’t know, for the last couple of years I’ve been working in central support to help impact across the university.  Amongst many things this has involved designing and delivering training, supporting funding bids, analysing REF submissions and a shed load of talks across the sector.  Quite frankly many of you will be sick of the sound of my voice and over-exuberant wavy-hand presentations.  Others will be sick of my diagramming and emphatic flowcharting, done whilst muttering things about stakeholders and gatekeeping. Hopefully a select few have felt these inputs were useful rather than head-exploding.

Thing is, I haven’t quite gone. As I head back more fully into academia, I take with me all I’ve learnt about impact and knowledge mobilisation and all the wonderful connections I’ve made across the sector. I suspect my neat and tidy health psychologist career may be now less neat and tidy (some would say it never was).  There’s undoubtedly a huge wealth of impact as yet unexplored in research terms. And I don’t just mean understanding REF case studies, but really understanding how impact is created, how academics can be supported to make their work ‘impactful’, and how to overhaul simplistic models of impact which are so unhelpful for a range of disciplines.  Watch this space for currently-in-progress outputs on impact literacy and knowledge mobilisation competencies (shout out here for the amazing David Phipps *holler*).  And ARMA hasn’t got rid of me. Yet.

Thanks to everyone who’s made the last couple of years so enjoyable. I hope to see you around / collaborate / co-author / co-bid / co-present / co-caffeinate / co-Victoria sponge…..

Julie (The artist formerly known as Coventry University Impact Officer)