Welcome to the LSE Impact Blog
The LSE Impact Blog is a hub for researchers, administrative staff, librarians, students, think tanks, government, and anyone else interested in maximising the impact of academic work in the social sciences and other disciplines. We hope to encourage debate, share best practice and keep the impact community up to date with news, events and the latest research.
If you would like to contribute or have ideas for the blog please contact the team at impactofsocialsciences@lse.ac.uk or tweet us @LSEImpactBlog.
Editor:
Michael Taster is Managing Editor of the LSE Impact Blog. He previously undertook doctoral research on Learned Societies and Open Access and holds a Masters degree in Town and Regional Planning from The University of Sheffield. He also holds a BA and MSt in Classical Archaeology from Oxford University. You can follow Michael on twitter @MichaelTaster where he tweets on issues relating to scholarly communication.
LSE Impact Blog Advisory Board
Subscribe to the Impact Blog Advisory Board list on Twitter to hear the latest from the Board.
Patrick Dunleavy (Chair) – LSE
Patrick Dunleavy is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he has worked since 1979. He has authored and edited numerous books on political science theory, British politics and urban politics, as well as more than 50 articles in professional journals. He is Chair of the Public Policy Group.
Email: p.dunleavy@lse.ac.uk
Rachael Cayley – University of Toronto
Rachael Cayley is an associate professor (teaching stream) in the Office of English Language and Writing Support at the School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto. She teaches academic writing and speaking to graduate students. Before joining the University of Toronto, she worked as an editor at Oxford University Press in Toronto. She has a PhD in philosophy from the New School for Social Research and a BA in political science from the University of British Columbia. Rachael has a blog on academic writing for graduate students, Explorations of Style. You can also follow Rachael on Twitter @explorstyle.
Stephen Curry – Imperial College London
Stephen Curry is a Professor of Structural Biology in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College. He researches the molecular basis of replication of RNA viruses such as foot-and-mouth disease virus and noroviruses. Stephen also writes regularly about science and the scientific life on his Reciprocal Space blog and at The Guardian. An active campaigner, Stephen is a founder member of Science is Vital and on the board of the Campaign for Science and Engineering.
Laura Czerniewicz – University of Cape Town
Laura Czerniewicz is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town, and director of the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching. She lead the university’s open scholarship initiative , blogs here and can be followed on Twitter as @czernie.
Nancy Graham – LSE
Nancy Graham is the Research Support and Academic Liaison Manager @LSELibrary. She manages the Research Support Services team in the Library, which facilitates the open dissemination of all LSE research outputs. In the past she has also worked on several inter-institutional projects on the use of open educational resources and has presented at numerous national and international conferences including at UNESCO.
Jonathan Gray – King’s College London and Public Data Lab
Dr. Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where he is currently writing a book on data worlds. He is also Cofounder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris). More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org and he tweets at @jwyg.
Duncan Green – Oxfam GB and LSE
Duncan Green is Senior Strategic Adviser for Oxfam GB and Professor in Practice in the department for International Development at LSE. He runs the From Poverty to Power blog and is author of the book How Change Happens (OUP, October 2016). He can be found on twitter @fp2p.
Steven Hill – HEFCE
Steven Hill is Head of Research Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Prior to joining HEFCE Steven was Head of the Strategy Unit at Research Councils UK, covering a range of research policy issues, and had several roles in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, working on evidence-based policy making. Earlier in his career Steven was a university lecturer at the University of Oxford where his research focussed on plant physiology and biotechnology.
Deborah Lupton – University of Canberra
Deborah Lupton is Centenary Research Professor at University of Canberra. She blogs at This Sociological Life and tweets @DALupton. Her latest books are Digital Sociology (2015, Routledge) and The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking (2016, Polity).
Ziyad Marar – SAGE Publications
Ziyad Marar is Global Publishing Director of SAGE. Having joined the company in 1989, Ziyad has worked across all aspects of publishing. He was appointed Editorial Director in 1997, Deputy Managing Director in 2006, and took on his current global role in 2010, in which he has responsibility for the overall strategic direction of SAGE’s publishing. Ziyad is also the author of three books combining his interests in psychology and philosophy, The Happiness Paradox (Reaction, 2003), Deception (Routledge, 2008) and most recently Intimacy: Understanding the Subtle Power of Human Connection (Routledge, 2012). He can be found on Twitter @ziyadmarar.
Rachel Middlemass – LSE
Rachel Middlemass is Head of Research and Development Partnerships at Zinc, which runs a venture builder programme helping founders from diverse backgrounds to build research-based companies that respond to social missions. Her role focuses on connecting early-stage innovators with research and researchers that will help them build evidence-based services and products that respond to unmet needs in Zinc’s four mission areas. Prior to joining Zinc in December 2020, she was the Research Impact Manager at the LSE and, before that, Head of Research Impact at UCL.
Cameron Neylon – Curtin University
Cameron Neylon is Professor of Research Communications at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University. He has previously worked for PLOS, the open access publisher and at the Science and Technology Facilitites Council UK. He is interested in how to make the internet more effective as a tool for scholarship. He writes and speaks regularly on scholarly communication, the design of web based tools for research, and the need for policy and cultural change within and around the research community.
Alison Powell – LSE
Alison Powell is an Assistant Professor and Programme Director of the MSc in Media and Communication (Data & Society). She researches how people’s values influence the way technology is built, and how technological systems in turn change the way we work and live together.
Jane Secker – LSE
Jane Secker is the Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor at London School of Economics and Political Science where she coordinates digital literacy programmes for staff and students including copyright training and advice. She is Chair of the CILIP Information Literacy Group, a member of the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance and the Universities UK Copyright Working Group, which negotiates licences for the higher education sector. She is widely published and author of four books, including Copyright and E-learning: a Guide for Practitioners, which was published in 2010 by Facet. The second edition (authored with Chris Morrison) is due for publication in June 2016.
Jane Tinkler – Nine Dots Prize
Jane Tinkler is currently Senior Prize Manager for the Nine Dots Prize, a major new initiative for the social sciences. It aims to stimulate research into vital but under-examined questions with a relevance to today’s world. It will launch in October 2016. She recently spent a year seconded to the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) as Senior Adviser in social science. She has been a social science researcher for nearly ten years working on applied projects with government, civil society and academic partners. Prior to joining POST, she was based in the Public Policy Group at the London School of Economics where most recently she worked on the impact of academic research in the social sciences. Her recent publications include: (with Simon Bastow and Patrick Dunleavy) (2014) The Impact of the Social Sciences: How Academics and Their Work Make a Difference.
Martin Weller – Open University
Martin Weller is Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University. He chaired the OU’s first major online course, with over 15,000 students annually, and was also the VLE project director. His interests are in the impact of new technologies, open education and learning environments. He has recently authored the book The Battle for Open, which is published by Ubiquity Press and available as open access. He blogs at edtechie.net.
The LSE Impact Blog is based in the central LSE Communications division. The blog team gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the HEIF5 programme run by LSE Knowledge Exchange.