Organised by the University of the Basque Country on 30-31 March 2023, the first ENLIGHT Impact Conference brought together 150 international experts from all over Europe to exchange and discuss approaches for impact assessment and for embedding impact within universities’ full spectrum of activities, being in education, in research, in innovation or in societal engagement related activities.
The first Impact conference formed the setting to bring the ENLIGHT community together with representatives of our peer European University Alliances, renowned impact experts from various European Higher Education Institutions, research organisations, public sector and private and consulting companies to jointly dscusse:
- WHY a university should be impact-driven?
- HOW to embed impact at our universities?
- WHAT are the barriers and opportunities for promoting a common impact-driven research agenda?
- HOW to capture the impact of universities’ full spectrum of activities? WHAT can we learn from the business, environmental, quality assurance and research impact assessment practices?
- WHO are the teams driving impact at our universities?
- HOW Universities Alliances are bringing about impact and transforming the European Education Area and the European Research Area?
The ENLIGHT Impact Conference combined three rich roundtable sessions, a dynamic workshop, and an impact-elevator pitches session with a social and cultural programme, including a guided visit to the Guggenheim Museum, the Conference Dinner at the emblematic Café Iruña in Bilbao, music performances by the UPV/EHU orchestra and a Basque traditional group of Txalaparta.
Impact Awards
The Conference has also given the opportunity to meet the fifteen ENLIGHT Impact Award Nominees and the future five ENLIGHT Impact Ambassadors. The ENLIGHT Impact Ambassadors are representatives of the awarded research teams who have demonstrated to be exemplars in the planning for and achieving impact in the ENLIGHT flagship areas. They are:
- Ilse Derluyn (Ghent University) for the “Childmove” research initiative under the Health & Well-being flagship area.
- Idoia Martin Guerrero (University of the Basque Country) for the “Precision Medicine Newwork in Complex diseases” research initiative under the Health & Well-being flagship area.
- Aaron Golden (University of Galway) for the “Tapas” initiative under the Climate Change flagship area.
- Kati Orru (University of Tartu) for the “Interactive Tool for Assessing and Modelling Crisis Vulnerability” research initiative under Digital revolution and digitization flagship area.
- Sarah-Anne Buckley (University of Galway) for the Tuam Oral History Project research project under the Equity flagship area
The award to the best ENLIGHT Impact pitch went to Heddrik van Rijn (University of Groningen) for his presentation on the SlimStampen initiative.
Outputs
The ENLIGHT Impact Conference contributed to meet the general ENLIGHT objectives of:
- Disseminating and contrasting its methodological appraoch for HEI impact assessment;
- Realising a first transfer of the knowledge generated on HE impact assessment for eventual replication to other European Universities and network;
- Positioning ENLIGHT as a reference in HE impact assessment.
Besides, it has also contributed to:
- Understand that Impact Assessment cannot be dissociated from external contextual factors, such as European, national and regional policy frameworks, as well as from universities’ institutional strategies, policies, capacities, resources and people (students, academics, researchers, management staff, administrative and support staff);
- Bring together the education and research communities (from the ENLIGHT Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 RISE project) and to create synergies between the two initiatives towards a truly open, integrated and impact-driven ENLIGHT European University;
- Understand that the European University Alliances initiative has a huge impact potential in the European Education Area and European Research Area.
The second ENLIGHT Impact Conference is planned for 2025 to share and extend progress on, and knowledge in, impact and best practices, and contribute thus to realise an impact-driven culture in and beyond ENLIGHT.
Aftermovie and pictures
All conference pictures are available on https://www.flickr.com/photos/euskampus/sets/72177720307213097/
Soon the conference video will be available at the ENLIGHT youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/enlighteu
For more information about the ENLIGHT Impact Conference and our methodolgical developments, please consult https://enlight-eu.org/landing-research-and-innovation/impact.