Research with Impact forums

Our Research with Impact webinar series launched in January 2021 to showcase some of the brilliant work that is undertaken at Sussex and explore issues which are of particular relevance to our research community, from PhDs to professors.

Through the Research with Impact forum series we aim to bring to life the incredible research activities that take place at the University and how we are delivering on our Research with Impact strategic ambitions [PDF, 95.81KB].

Professor Keith Jones, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise), leads the forums and invites internal and external speakers to contribute or lead sessions.

The events are designed to be both informative and informal ways of presenting the latest research news.

2023/24

Upcoming events:

1 May 2024 | 2.30pm-3.30pm
Centres of Excellence II
Speakers: TBC
Joining link: TBC

12 June 2024 | 2.30pm-3.30pm
REF: what's changed?
Speakers: Seb Oliver
Joining link: TBC

Previous events:

13 March 2024 | 2.30pm-3.30pm
 Sustaining impact for environmental sustainability
Speakers: Professor Debbie Keeling; Tom Wolfenden; Nora Davies; Dr Perpetua Kirby; Dr Rebecca Webb; Professor Mika Peck; Dr Chris Sandom; Professor Joseph Alcamo

31 January 2024 | 2.30pm-3.30pm
Research Culture at Sussex
Speakers: Professor Sotaro Kita; Professor Seb Oliver; Dr Lorna Hards; Dr Andre Maia Chagas

Event transcript and presentations: coming soon

6 December 2023
Sussex AI
Speakers: Professor Thomas Nowotny; Dr Temitayo Olugbade; Professor Luc Berthouze; Professor Julie Weeds 
Event transcript

8 November 2023
Sussex Innovation
Speakers: Sussex Innovation CEO, Nigel Lambe, plus key members of the Sussex Innovation team

 Event transcript

2022/23

28 June 2023
Good research practice and a healthy research culture | Wednesday 28 June | 2.30-4.00pm
We were joined by guest speaker James Parry, Chief Executive of the UK Research Integrity Office.


10 May 2023
Sussex Humanities Lab

Speakers included:

  • Dr Sharon Webb
  • Professor Thor Magnusson
  • Dr Justyna Robinson
  • Dr Jo Walton
  • Dr Cecile Chevalier and Dr Irene Fubara-Manual


18 January 2023
Sussex Neuroscience

Speakers included:

  • Professor Seb Oliver
  • Professor Miguel Maravall
  • Professor Chris Bird
  • Professor Anil Seth
  • Professor Louise Serpell
  • Dr Jenny Bosten
  • Professor Itamar Ronen



14 December 2022
Research and Enterprise Services

Speakers included:

  • Keith Jones
  • Vanessa Cuthill
  • Sue Baxter
  • Louise Wrigley
  • Antony Walsh
  • Mark Chee
  • Suzanna Broom

October 2022
Quantum technology at Sussex
Speakers included:

    • Professor Keith Jones, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise)
    • Professor Winfried Hensinger, Head of the Sussex Ion Quantum Technology Group and Director of the Sussex Centre for Quantum Technologies
    • Keynote: Professor Sir Peter Knight, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of UK’s National Quantum Technology Programme

Event transcript: Transcript: Research with Impact forum 20 October 2022 [DOCX 62.61KB]

2021/22

May
REF 2021 results, with Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise), Keith Jones, and colleagues

Event presentation: 
Presentation - 12 May 2022 RWI forum - REF 2021 results [PDF 2.91MB]

Note: This version of the presentation has been updated since the event to include some clarifying information, including extra slides to give context to analysis provided in the webinar. Static ranking tables have also been removed and replaced with links to the Times Higher Education tables. 


Outstanding questions:

1. Why is Leicester listed twice in UoA34?

Leicester is listed twice in UoA34 because the university will have requested and received advance permission to make multiple submissions to the same Unit of Assessment (UoA). This is an approach that is not available by default, but for which REF did allow special cases to be considered. This was sometimes approved where different departments in a particular institution represent distinct elements within the UoA - so for Leicester, one of their submissions to UoA34 is labelled as 'Museum Studies', and the other as 'Media and Communication'. 

2. Are there plans to develop new Engineering programmes as our comparatively smaller school will likely underperform across the sector if that UoA stays broad?

This is a question for the School of Engineering and Informatics in terms of developing its REF strategy for the next submission.  


3. Would it make a difference if we were to submit to a smaller number of UoAs?

All staff that are eligible to be submitted REF have to be submitted according to current REF rules. However some individuals because of the nature of their research  have the potential to be submitted to different UoAs (eg. either to UoA4 or UoA5), so in principle any higher education institution could make the decision to expand/contract its UoAs on the basis of how portable the research was from one UoA to another. However the inclusion of all staff in the REF has severely restricted the ability to game the assessment in this way the question describes.

April
Narrative CVs and broader DORA principles of evaluating research with Suzanne Tatham

March
Early Career Researchers, with Erika Mancini and Dana Gamble from Universities UK discuss the Concordat work to support the careers of researchers

February
Innovation and Business Partnerships at Sussex and how the University is developing its work in this area.

2020/21

May
Director of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP) and former Chief Scientist to the United Nations Environment Programme, Professor Joseph Alcamo talked about Sustainability SSRP and COP linked with Sustainability strategy (Joseph Alcamo, Beth Nicholls, Ozul Bozkurt)

March
Internationalisation and security and how it applies to research (Keith Jones and Bridget Edminson)

January
Introduction / launch of webinar series (Keith Jones, Sue Angulatta and Seb Oliver)

September
Open Research (Dr Chris Kiefer, Jennifer Gibson, Dr Rose Harris-Birtill, Prof Marcus Munafò)