Abstract

The role of universities within society is constantly evolving. Policy makers, tax payers, companies and other societal actors look to universities (and other HEIs) to help provide solutions to societal and economic challenges. To provide impact in other words. To this end, universities are establishing various different pathways to achieve this impact: through education, service to society (for example experts represented in the media), or knowledge exchange (KE). KE is the practice of leveraging research results and academic expertise to the benefit of society. For researchers in Humanities and Social Sciences (SSH), finding the right pathway to translate their research results into societal impact can be a challenge. In contrast to some other research domains, where this process is more structured and tangible, knowledge exchange in SSH is much more varied and often less apparent. In this session we will explain how the Research Support Team (RST) of the Group of Humanities and Social Sciences at KU Leuven encourages and supports researchers within SSH to engage in processes of knowledge exchange that are tailored to their research domain.

The RST was established in 2016 to help researchers within the Group to find external (mostly European) funding. We help researchers from the 8 Faculties of the Group (Arts, Philosophy, Theology, The Arts, Sociology, Psychology, Economics and Law) in various aspects of their research in the pre-grant phase through focused workshops, help in consortium building, proofreading of research proposals and many more activities. The last 4-5 years we added research impact and KE to our portfolio. In 2019-2020 we performed a survey within the Group to examine:
• to what extent researchers had already engaged in KE activities and what kind of activities were most common;
• what their ambitions and specific plans were when it comes to KE;
• what the major thresholds were and what kind of support was lacking.

The practice and the results of this survey provided us with the information and the internal network that we needed to cater to the needs of the researchers. In the last two years we have developed this focus on KE on various levels:
• Individual researchers: we provide tailored advice regarding internal and external funding channels for applied research and KE and help them think of possible impact pathways for their research results;
• Faculty: we collaborate with the research support colleagues to identify opportunities and we also organize KE workshops where we involve researchers from the faculty to make this as domain-specific as possible;
• Group: we lobby to make Impact and KE absolute policy focus points. Both now have an important place in the Group Policy Plan;
• University: we have strengthened ties with various stakeholders that are connected to the university impact and KE policy and practice (like the Tech Transfer Office and Internal Funds Office) and we try to leverage their expertise for researchers within the Group.
Take-away messages from this presentation:
• Good practices regarding KE in SSH
• Tips to engage stakeholders in this process