From Inquiry to Impact: Co-Producing Research to Tackle Society's Grand Challenges
(A2025-126480)

AUTHORS

Carmela Bosangit, Cardiff University; Caroline Verfuerth, Cardiff University; Helena Knight, Cardiff University; Carolyn Strong, Cardiff University; Nicole Koenig-Lewis, Cardiff University

ABSTRACT

Universities have been increasingly pressured to demonstrate their impact on the society and economy by sharing their research (Hughes et al, 2017). This has been extensively mentioned in the literature yet unexplored and less discussed. In the past decades, available public funding has decreased significantly with the growth of research resulting in the need to get the best value from research (Bornnman, 2012). In the UK, for example, the Research Excellence Framework recognises research that has tangible value and benefits beyond the world of academia (Sutton, 2019). Universities have been doing research that can address grand challenges as they co-produce knowledge with stakeholders. With the involvement of stakeholders and the public in the research process, Hughes et al (2017) stress the automatic greater buy-in and a higher likelihood of achieving the benefit and change for these groups. In this session, we promote the concept of public value as instrumental to transforming research into impact. Public value refers to the “value that benefits the community and the wider society in addition to those of individual stakeholders. It is about valuing relationships between individuals, groups and an unknowable social entity” (Meynhardt 2009, 204). In Cardiff Business School, as the first-ever public value business school, we tackle societal grand challenges by coproducing research and co-creating solutions with stakeholders and by doing this becoming a core part of the community and society. This session aims to create a space to discuss the impact of public value research and engagement by sharing experiences on how we work with different stakeholders including discussions on the challenges of transforming research to impact. This innovative and interactive session will begin with four impulse presentations (5-10 min) sharing our research impact activities leading into an engaging audience discussion with the panel about how we can learn from the impact of public value research. The panel will discuss how co-producing research with non-academic partners can address the grand challenges our society is facing. Marketing plays a key role in the required systematic changes needed. During the panel discussion, we will reflect on our key learnings and invite the audience to take part in a participatory exercise to reflect on their research impact, identify challenges and how they overcome these. The following impulse presentations are included in the session: Impulse Presentation 1: Challenging Barriers: Accessing Low-Carbon Food in Resource-Limited Communities, Helena Knight, Caroline Verfuerth, Cardiff University, UK; Impulse Presentation 2: Social visions for a low-carbon futures: The grand challenge of a just transition, Caroline Verfuerth, Catherine Cherry, Cardiff University; Christina Demski, Bath University; Impulse Presentation 3: Community and Society Grand Challenges Case Study, Carolyn Strong, Cardiff University, Impulse Presentation 4: Sports events as agents of sustainable behaviour change, Nicole Koenig-Lewis, Andrea Collins, Denitsa Dineva, Cardiff University.