This paper is set against the rise in international research policies that incentivise socio-economic impacts from university-based research through formalised research evaluation and funding mechanisms, with profound consequences for academics’ work and careers. This trend has been manifested in the introduction of ‘impact’ as a factor of national research evaluation programmes e.g. in UK, Australia (presently paused), New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway (Golhasany and Harvey 2022), and, on a transnational level, as key aspect of funding, e.g. in European Union’s flagship Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe funding programmes, and by the dictum of innovation and mission-oriented research for the European Research Area (Gunn and Mintrom 2016). While the reception of the ‘impact agenda’ among the academics has ranged from enthusiastic to resentful (see Watermeyer and Chubb [2019] for UK and Australian context; Ochsner and Bulaitis [2023] for the manifestations of the ‘impact agenda’ in different European countries), the converging trends in national research evaluation regimes across Europe (Pekkola et al. 2024) suggest a trajectory towards further institutionalisation of impact in the governance of academic work and careers (see also Wroblewska 2021).

In the UK, which has been an ‘early adopter’ of the impact agenda and increasingly the ‘golden standard’ of impact evaluation for other European countries to follow (ibid.), the effect on academic work and careers has been theorised as another layer of the ‘prestige economy’ in academia (Watermeyer and Rowe, 2021; Watermeyer and Chubb, 2019) that produces new modalities of scholarly distinction by prioritising certain forms of impact, namely that which highlights high-level partnerships, policy influence and commercial success. This effect, other colleagues have argued (Davies et al. 2020) is inevitably shaped by existing ‘inequality regimes’ (Ackers in ibid.), and so other forms of research-with-impact, such as that which is more local and relational, iterative, critical, collaborative, or process-led, more common in humanities and some social sciences (see Oancea, 2023) remain neglected and un(der)valued. This leads to an argument that the present impact governance regimes favour academic performativity that is traditionally more masculine and individualistic (Chubb and Derrick, 2020), science-modelled, and reserved for more senior – and already more powerful – academics.

Meanwhile, research on ECRs’ engagement with the impact agenda has been limited but has begun to highlight (see Wroblewska et al. 2023; Fenby-Hulse et al., 2019) that while ECRs seek opportunities for impactful research both for the advancement of their careers and as what they see as inherent value of their research, they face limitations coming from negotiating ever-multiplying demands on their time and resources in face of employment precarity, lack of knowledge and skills, or the emotional and career costs resulting from time- and resource-intensive, but often undervalued forms of deeply engaged and collaborative research (Chubb and Derrick, 2020).

Given the practical and theoretical context outlined above, this paper asks:

1) What is the nature of contribution to socio-economic impact made by social sciences and humanities (SSH) early career researchers (ECRs)?

2) What factors facilitate the opportunities to deliver highly valued – and valuable – impact for ECRs, including for those who may be subject to the existing ‘inequality regimes’ (under-represented staff in terms of, e.g. gender and/or ethnicity)?

3) What are the consequences for the academic career(s) of SSH ECRs (including those under-represented in terms of gender and/or ethnicity) who engage in the delivery of high-value impact?

As the site of one of the most strongly institutionalised impact agendas, this paper focuses on the UK context, with important implications for the European systems that increasingly follow its lead. The paper will examine research impact assessed as ‘world leading’ in the last round (2021) of the UK national research evaluation, as (co-)produced by SSH ECRs, including women and academics from ethnically minoritised backgrounds. It will build on the work that explored the forms of ‘world-leading’ impact in SSH through a content and discourse analysis of 148 highly rated ‘impact case studies’ submitted for evaluation (Djerasimovic and Barke, 2024). This work looked at the types, authorship, narration of impact, and the nature of its underlying research, and identified a subset of 45 case studies that were (co)authored by ECRs: lecturers (first tier of permanent academic posts in the UK), research fellows and research associates (typically post-docs). Career stage information was provided in the case study data, accessed through the publicly available impact case study database (https://2021.ref.ac.uk/), filtered by discipline. In coding staff ethnicity, we relied on the UK population census categories, and used the Ethnea tool (recognising its inherent weaknesses) supplemented by Google research. Gender was coded as binary not by default, but by attention to used pronouns, although we are aware of the deficiencies of this approach, and we were ultimately partly guided by the focus in the literature on women in the discussions of impact leadership gender disparities. This paper will focus on the background of ‘impact success stories’ for SSH ECRs, including those from under-represented gender and ethnic backgrounds, through semi-structured interviews guided by the RQs with a minimum of 20 ECRs identified through the impact case study subset, reflecting a diversity of disciplines, career stages, and personal and institutional backgrounds. The research is under way, and the interviews will focus on the experience of (co-) creating highly evaluated impact, the forms of research-with-impact in which these SSH ECRs engage, their experience with impactful research (including any training, mentoring, and other institutional support) during their doctorate, the perceived value and cost of conducting research-with-impact, and the consequences for their careers of (co)delivering ‘world-leading’ impact, several years following the research evaluation exercise. The interviews will be transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically, and the results presented with attention to the key aspects of their experiences as framed by the literature and theory outlined in the previous section.

As the possibilities and rewards for socio-economic impact of university research continue to grow, and institutional and individual resources and reputations become tied to it, it is essential that the scholarship addresses the potential casualties of this trend, beyond discussing consequences for blue-skies research(ers), which, while welcome, have tended to dominate the literature critical of the impact agenda. The results of the present study will provide crucial and much needed qualitative insights on the opportunities for, and consequences of, producing ‘high value’ socio-economic impact in SSH as an ECR, and further flesh out any challenges that will complement the extant, but limited, work on impact and ECRs (Wroblewska et al. 2023; Fenby-Hulse et al. 2019). The results might further point to the existing issues around inequality – of research, of impact, and of associated academic careers – in providing details of the forms of research and impactful partnerships, and the ECRs’ role in, and reward for, the delivery of these. However, the results might also illuminate sites of resistance, alliance and agency, enabling, and enabled by, the opening up of the HE structures to different forms of knowledge. Equally importantly, the focus on ECRs’ experiences around impact training, delivery, and development/progress opportunities for SSH ECRs might point in the direction of the diversification of academic careers (Pekkola et al., 2024). Finally, it is likely to emphasise the need for more in-depth exploration of the place of impact in doctoral education, which, in some SSH contexts, remains an aspect of academic work from which doctoral candidates are ‘shielded’ by their supervisors (Skov and Bengtsen, 2024), but which may prove instrumental in expanding the doctoral research training in a way that better prepares ECRs for non-academic careers and/or cross-sectoral mobility (Teelken et al., 2023).

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