Impact talk: The co-production - research – engagement – impact circle: Doing research in public

Impact talk: The co-production - research – engagement – impact circle: Doing research in public

The aim of this session is to explore the potential benefits that academic research can have to those outside our own disciplines and outside academia entirely. Drawing both on my experience as a researcher and as someone who has supported research and impact across STEM and SHAPE, I will give examples, hints, and tips for those wanting to collaborate beyond academia. I will outline practical steps for reverse engineering impact, including co-production, communication for engagement, types of impact, and evidence collecting. Our discussion will also consider the ethics of impact, the potential for “grimpact”, and the challenges of doing research in, with, and for, different publics.

Bio

Elizabeth Stokoe is Academic Director of Impact at The London School of Economics and Political Science where she is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. She conducts conversation analytic research to understand how talk works - from first dates to medical communication and from sales encounters to crisis negotiation. She has worked as an industry fellow at technology companies Typeform and at Deployed. In addition to academic publishing, she is passionate about science communication, and has given talks at TED, Google, Microsoft, and The Royal Institution, and performed at Latitude and Cheltenham Science Festivals. Her books include Talk: The Science of Conversation (Little, Brown, 2018), Crisis Talk (Routledge, 2022, co-authored with Rein Ove Sikveland and Heidi Kevoe-Feldman), and Categories in Social Interaction (Routledge, 2025, co-authored with Kevin Whitehead and Geoffrey Raymond). Her research and biography were featured on BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific. During the Covid-19 pandemic she participated in a behavioural science sub-group of the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and is a member of Independent SAGE behaviour group. She is a Wired Innovation Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society.