Top stories

The fourth installment of Exchange took place in July, with around 100 university communications and research impact staff convening at Coram in London to discuss topics of interest, hear from expert speakers and enjoy the opportunity to meet their opposite numbers from universities across the UK, and further afield.

See below for an overview of the sessions, download links for the material presented, and links to full video recordings of the sessions (also available on the Exchange YouTube channel).

Our keynote speaker this year, higher education communications consultant Justin Shaw of Communications Management spoke about ways in which resources a university already has – its depth of research expertise – can de deployed to raise awareness of the institution, build the brand, and ultimately speak to potential future students to drive student interest and recruitment.

Our first panel of the day looked at the Areas of Research Interest programme in the UK civil service, where government departments and ministries publish requests for assistance and insight from researchers in order to inform current and future policies and to assist with analysis and direction within the department. A relatively new programme, the number of departments publishing ARIs has increased recently, and these can now be easily found and searched through the UKRI-funded Overton Engage platform, rather than having to trawl through multiple government department websites on gov.uk.

Our panelists include Kathryn Oliver, Professor of Evidence and Policy, LSHTM, and Co-lead of Transforming Evidence, who while on secondment to the civil service was instrumental in setting up the ARI programme. Daniel Robinson, Head of Policy Partnerships and Impact, ESRC, and Mike Daly of the Central Analysis and Science Strategy Unit at the Department for Work and Pensions. Chair was Olivia Stevenson, Deputy Director, UCL Public Policy who had formerly been a co-investigator for academic-public sector engagement projects such as CAPE and IPPO.

Encouraging academics to take the time to take part in media work is an ongoing challenge. Our panellists introduced a few of the techniques they use to encourage academic participation, and gave examples of where this has worked well. On the panel were Allison Stratford, Associate Director Corporate Communications, University of Southampton, Caroline Durbin, Research Communications Manager, University of Birmingham, and Lizzie Ellen, Senior Communications Manager, Faculty of Natural, Mathematical and Engineering Sciences, King's College London.

In REF2029, impact has been redefined as 'engagement and impact'. With the exact definition still to be nailed down, speakers Jonathan Piotrowski, Head of REF Policy, UK REF Team, research assessment expert Claire Donovan, Research Professor of Higher Education, University of Greenwich, and Lesley Paterson, Director, Mesh Associates (knowledge exchange and engagement consultants), spoke about the changing shape of REF2029 and what additional aspects were now on the table to measured and scored.

How can university websites make the best of the high-quality, authoritative information they contain? SEO is the answer to attract audiences to university websites, and speaker James Vatter, Senior SEO Consultant at Reddico, provided some techniques and technical aspects for university communications to consider.

We encourage academics to participate in public conversations and to share their expertise with the public, but sometimes the experience can be bruising. In this session Victoria O'Meara, Lecturer in Digital Media, University of Leicester, presents the approach devised by her and Jaigris Hodson, Canada Research Chair in Digital Misinformation, Polarization, and Anti-Social Media at Royal Roads University, Canada, to help insulate academics from the effects of abuse and trolling directed at them in the course of their work.

Working in groups attendees discussed the different themes of the day and how to put into practice what has been learned.

The last but not least important part of the day!