May 2023
This month’s reports summarises four articles that in/directly relate to the impact of universities. The first paper asks if our conceptualisation and vocabulary around academic activism and research impact is adequate (Bengtson, 2022). The second study surveyed and crtically evaluated the tourism research impact submitted to the UK’s 2021 REF (Viana-Lora, 2023). The third paper identifies different pathways of impact empirically (Muhonen et al., 2020). The last piece of research investigates Hegel’s conception of evil (Brownlee, 2013).
[1]) Bengston argues that academic activism should be understood beyond direct political actions, emphasizing additional dimensions such as academic reaction, co-action, and interaction. By building upon critical realist understanding of research, he suggests that the meaning of research's societal value should be expanded to include social and ethical aspects, going beyond mere economic and technological considerations. This is important as not to jeopardize researchers' agency in connecting their work with broader society, emphasizing that the societal value of research depends on both the researchers' actions and the impact of their work. Calls for research impact need to self-scrutinise the social and ethical implications of research in external contexts and emphasize research's deeper purpose of promoting inclusivity, creativity, and pluralism.
[2]) The article examines the impact of tourism research in the United Kingdom, the sample size is taken from REF 2021 case studies. The study finds that the number of societal impact case studies has decreased compared to REF 2014, suggesting a need to refocus research to highlight its societal benefits. Different impact pathways are identified, including collaboration, spin-off projects, application of knowledge, training, capacity building, and influencing policy. Various sources, such as websites, are used to corroborate societal impact. The complexity of attributing impact, coupled with the dynamic nature of the tourism industry, may contribute to the limited research on societal impact in tourism. This demise in reported tourism research raises question around the adverse effects of research metrics counter-productive pressure on tourism research.
[3]) The study developed a typology that captures the diverse ways in which social sciences and humanities (SSH) research can have a societal impact. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of SSH impact cases from European research to identify common elements and develop a typology of impact pathways. The typology includes archetypes such as (1) interactive dissemination, (2) collaboration, (3) public engagement, (4) expertise consultation, (5) mobility, (6) anticipatory, (7) serendipitous, (8) social innovation, (9) commercialisation, (10), research engagement snowballing, (11) knowledge creep and (12) building new epistemic communities. The authors argue that this typology can be applicable to other fields of science and suggest that policy support should be provided to encourage and enable researchers to create research impact. They also emphasize the importance of considering external factors that can influence research outcomes.
[4]) The article sets out the essential elements of Hegel’s conception of evil. Hegel understands evil primarily as a moral phenomenon. In particular, he identifies evil as a pernicious subjectivism and hypocrisy that undermines the social and institutional conditions for ethical action. An appropriate understanding of his conception of evil points to the centrality of trust to ethicality (die Sittlichkeit). In Hegel’s view extreme subjectivism and hypocrisy are practical failures significant enough to be evil precisely because they not only compromise trust, but they corrode the very possibility for social trust formation in the first place. Hegel’s account of morality, specifically by understanding the sense in which evil constitutes the “inversion” of the moral good. For Hegel, evil is therefore a subjective attitude in which the agent inverts the appropriate order of moral motivation, making her own arbitrary choice the highest principle governing her action over and above the recognition of her duties.
[1] Bengtsen, S. S. (2022). Academic Activism Reconsidered–between Societal Impact and Emancipation. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, 4(2), 41-60.
[2] Viana-Lora, A. (2023). The societal impact of tourism research of the Research Excellence Framework 2021. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 1-16.
[3]. Muhonen, R., Benneworth, P., & Olmos-Peñuela, J. (2020). From productive interactions to impact pathways: Understanding the key dimensions in developing SSH research societal impact. Research Evaluation, 29(1), 34-47.
[4] Brownlee, T. (2013). Hegel’s Moral Concept of Evil. Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie, 52(1), 81-108.
