Research with Impact at Carnegie School of Sport

Welcome from Dr Leanne Norman

Carnegie School of Sport Research Impact Co-ordinator

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Carnegie School of Sport Research with Impact website. We are proud to share and celebrate with you the impacts of our research across sport and leisure with outstanding areas of excellence in a number of specific fields. Research-related knowledge and skills benefit individuals, organisations and communities through a diversity of ways and it is research that contributes to real-world change, beyond academia, that lies at the heart of our work within the Carnegie School of Sport.

We are recognised as one of the leading research units within sport and exercise science, leisure and tourism. Through our Research Centres and Subject Groups, we strive to provide a research environment that enables our researchers to undertake work of the highest quality, relevance, and impact, all whilst working collaboratively across the School and externally too. We are a School that includes a rich breadth and depth of expertise across the disciplines. This allows us to be in an excellent position to be a community of researchers that contribute a positive and decisive difference to people, communities, and organisations.

Many of our colleagues are leading researchers within their subject areas, built in part by the development of quality relationships with external partners in order to achieve change arising from their research. We seek to apply our research and exchange our expertise to bring about positive change and benefits for the organisations, the people, and the communities with whom we collaborate. Knowledge exchange and partnering has long been at the heart of research within the Carnegie School of Sport. We have a rich history of undertaking work that contributes to wider social change, of using our research to inform our teaching to improve student experience, and we enjoy a wide range of excellent relationships with partners locally, nationally, and internationally.

Through this website, you can learn more about the specific areas in which we are recognised for our impactful research. You can access resources that will help to guide you in the design and exchange of impactful research, and learn about new opportunities or access links to increase your development as an impactful researcher. Through this website, you can also locate the sources of internal support that exist to help you in the production of impactful research.

Please feel free to get in touch for further information about the ways in which we produce research with impact here at Carnegie, or to learn more about how we can support you as impactful researchers.

Our Strategy

We are pleased to share with you our Carnegie School of Sport Research Impact strategy (2019-2021). This sets out our strategic intent for the next two years and for a legacy beyond the 2021 REF exercise. It defines our ambition to become an advanced impact literate School in which we will support our researchers at every stage of the research process to embed principles of impact into the work they lead. Our ambitions will be achieved through an overall focus on how we can support impactful research, with whom, and what benefits can we demonstrate.

The Carnegie School of Sport Research Impact Strategy (2019-2021) will empower our colleagues to understand how impact operates and how it can be facilitated to produce transformative research.  By supporting our colleagues to build effective impact into every stage of the research planning process; from design, to engaging with research users, to representing our stakeholders, to bringing about change, and towards sustaining the effects of our research, we will begin to develop even further our levels of research impact literacy. This will ensure we are well equipped to understand, assess and take leadership for connecting research to external stakeholders beyond academia.

Through the strategy, colleagues will understand the routes to achieving impact, what benefits arise from their research, for whom, and how it can be evidenced. They will be able to mobilise their research to bring about real world changes, and we will have a greater understanding of who is part of this process and what skills are required to build this level of literacy. It will support the University’s broader vision to deliver leading research, and more specifically, the School’s strategic plan to be at the forefront of world-leading research in sport within sport and exercise science, leisure, and tourism. This will be realised with our partners through collaboration and knowledge exchange, and for the public benefit through changes that include attitudinal, economic, environmental, health and well-being, policy, decision making, social, cultural, and capacity. In summary, the strategy along with the accompanying action plan, provides the vision and direction to help us contribute a positive and decisive difference to people, communities, and organisations with whom we work.

Dr Leanne Norman, Carnegie School of Sport Research Impact Coordinator

Click to download the Carnegie School of Sport Impact Strategy

Click to download the Carnegie School of Sport Impact Action Plan