Enhancing Research Impact on Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change (ERIMACC)

The overall aim of the proposed research is to better understand how to enhance the societal impact of climate change governance research.

Producing research impact requires expertise that is not generally incorporated in traditional disciplinary academic training and education. Therefore, the secondary aim to increase the expertise on research impact of those conducting climate change governance research is no less important.

The interaction between science and society is not a simple matter of linear knowledge transfer from research to practice and recent research on science-society interfaces has identified various forms of knowledge transfer and exchange.

Knowledge about research impact is dispersed in several bodies of literature: political and policy science, public administration, business management and innovation studies, communication studies. Moreover, it generally fails to provide practical guidelines.

To know what expertise researchers should acquire, new knowledge about the production of research impact therefore has to be generated.

Action research within ongoing research projects is the preferred research strategy for this study.

Through design and testing of strategies for delivering impact it will be explored how different types of research, scholarship and engagement initiatives help to shape the decisions made by local and regional governments and private and civil society stakeholders.

Grant

Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG