Hello everyone,

Happy New Year!

It's been a busy time at Fast Track Impact as we launched the third edition of The Research Impact Handbook. To mark the occasion, we hosted an online workshop with leading voices in the international impact field on 22 January. If you missed it, don't worry - you can still access the recording on our YouTube channel. You can also access the slides from the discussion here.

As we kick off a new year, I wish you all the best for 2026, and I look forward to sharing research impact news with you in the coming months.

Enjoy!

News from Fast Track Impact

THE RESEARCH IMPACT HANDBOOK

Get 20% off when you buy the third edition of The Research Impact Handbook from Routledge, now updated with new tools, recent case studies and insights from current practice.

FEATURED COURSES

The Ethics of Engagement and Impact has rapidly become our best-selling course! This interactive workshop explores the essentials of ethical research impact. Participants gain insights into ethical impact practices, ensuring their research responsibly benefits society and effectively engages diverse relevant parties. Book a session here.

FEATURED RESOURCES

Now is the time to be thinking more deeply about the ethics of your engagement and impact. We've developed some resources on Ethical Engagement and Impact that you can access here for free.

Check out our growing catalogue of courses here (worth checking out the new ones if you haven't looked for a while!) and get in touch to set up a call to discuss your needs. 

Research impact news

• Here is a useful tool to help researchers manage power in engagement processes. It was developed for conservation, but is relevant across contexts. 

   

• There is a free training session on participatory methods relevant to engagement and impact from the REINFORCING project on 3 February 2026 from 3 to 5pm (CET).

   

• Leading research impact tends to stall for familiar reasons: unclear purpose, thin trust, and organisations that move slowly even when the evidence is strong.I ordered this new book by Professor Hanifa Shah OBE, Orbit Shift. I had the opportunity to review it and highly recommend it to anyone trying to make change stick.

• This new book by Marcel Bogers and Mike Young is the most comprehensive, up-to-date and evidence-based book I've seen on social media for research impact and it's free via Routledge Books.
  
  

• Lots of us have tried this and reached the same conclusion, but now Arsalan and colleagues have written a paper about the fact that ChatGPT can't write impact case studies for REF. 

   

• When there's a new policy buzzword everyone is jumping on, that connects with your research, should you "provide broad direction, deliberate to tailor policy to new contexts, or carry on regardless"? A new paper by Paul Cairney explores three options for dealing with the latest buzzword in your field: define, deliberate and do.

  
  

• Book now for this year's Social Sciences Impact Conference in Oxford from 24 to 25 March. The theme is on navigating uncertainty to create change.

  
  

• A reminder that Eric Jensen’s social research methods textbook, Doing Research in the Real World (6th Ed.), is now available. It offers a clear, practice-based introduction to designing and conducting robust research across disciplines. A free preview is available for anyone interested in updating their teaching materials or refining methodological skills.

I hope you've found something useful in this newsletter. If you think others would benefit from future emails, they can subscribe here.

I'll be in touch again next month with another newsletter edition.

Take care till then,

Mark