Over the past several years, increased attention has been paid to wider impacts, knowledge mobilization, knowledge transfer, and so on.

Image (c) Amy Crook, used with permission.

As difficult as it is for you to articulate the likely significance of your proposed research for the advancement of knowledge in your field, it is even more difficult for you to imagine what it might mean beyond your field.

How the hell would you know? You aren’t a policy maker? Or a practitioner? Or a lay reader of classic literature?

No wonder this makes you grumpy.

How important is practical significance?

The likely practical significance of your research may or may not be important to the adjudication committee. It depends on the funder and on the objectives of the particular program you are applying to.

Make sure you address things that are directly relevant to the objectives of the program and the mandate of the organization.

• A program like SSHRC’s Insight Grant has as it’s primary objective to fund academic research. If you don’t explain how your research advances academic knowledge, it doesn’t matter how important it is to wider audiences.
• A program run by a government department which aims to improve policy in a given area only cares whether the proposed research will constitute a major advance in your field if you have already demonstrated that it will contribute to the improvement in policy or practice that they are trying to achieve.

Even where practical significance is secondary, in a highly competitive funding program it could make the difference between being funded and not being funded.

The difficulties are the same as they are for demonstrating the scholarly significance.

If you think your research is likely to have practical significance, then you need to articulate what you think that will be and outline your reasoning. If you think it has no practical significance, you are going to be hard pressed to convince anyone else that it will.

The practical significance may not lie in the solution to your research question. It may be in the methodology you develop to undertake (part of) the research. It may be in one subset of findings. The fact that the practical significance is but one of multiple outcomes of the project is not likely to be a problem.

It probably doesn’t have to be earth shattering. Plenty of bio-medical scientists are doing work which may make a contribution to finding treatments (and cures?) for cancer.  It is unlikely that any individual research project will actually find a treatment or cure.

Things to consider

Who else, apart from other researchers in your discipline, might be interested in the work you are doing?

• List potential audiences for (aspects of) your work. Include academics beyond your own discipline.
• Be as specific as possible about other audiences.

Why do you think they will be interested? Not a rhetorical question.

You can work out how you will reach that audience later. (Hint: you can budget for help.)

I can help

I’ve been helping researchers with SSHRC grants since 2005. I’m not an editor or a grant writer. I’m a coach. I can coach you through this process.

We start with a telephone conversation where I can help you articulate the objectives, among other things. Then I support you through the process of writing the narrative parts of the proposal, right up to a full draft.

More details about how grant support works.

Are you worried about your conference presentation? Or excited about meeting up with colleagues you don’t see in person very often?

Is this your first time? Are you unsure about what it’ll be like? What to wear? Who to talk to? How your presentation will go?

Don’t panic. Everyone feels a mix of excitement and fear about conferences.

On the one hand it feels like a place where you are going to be judged.

You are going to stand up and talk about your research, this thing you are so passionate about and so invested in, to a bunch of strangers. And you probably think that they will know, from that one short presentation, whether you are cut out for this academic game. Will they like you? Will they think you are a fraud?

On the other hand, Congress is an opportunity to meet up with other people who are equally passionate about ideas and who don’t think it is crazy to stay up until 3 a.m. talking about Deleuze (or whatever it is you would love to stay up until 3 a.m. talking about).

I’ll let you in on a secret. The second one is what it is all about.

Conference papers are like speed dating.

You can’t say a lot in a 15 to 20 minute conference presentation. And this worries a lot of people, especially if you think that the point is to show the audience what a brilliant academic you are.

In reality, your goal is to connect with the people in the room who would love to join you for dinner/beer/wine/coffee to talk for much longer than 15 minutes about your research.

Focus on your findings, your insights, your theoretical musings. What is it about your research that you’d like people to know? Talk about that.

You can talk about how it relates to wider debates in the bar later. And how it relates to someone else’s findings. And the interesting theoretical stuff that you are still trying to figure out. That is what is going to keep you going until 3 a.m.

The presentation is where you meet the people you are still going to be talking to later.

Which sessions should you attend?

A successful conference is one in which you meet someone interesting. Go to sessions to find someone you would love to spend longer than 15 minutes talking to about their research (and maybe yours, too).

These are the people who can give you useful feedback when you are stuck on an article.

These are your future collaborators; the people who help you develop new ideas and new research directions.

Congress is where you get to meet up, every year, to discuss what is happening and really advance those ideas. In between, you have e-mail. And the telephone.

Being instrumental

Building connections with other scholars is an important goal. You don’t want to seem only instrumental, no one will want to hang out with you if you seem like you are just in it for what you can get. But you should be aware of all the ways that you can make Congress work for you.

Are you looking for an academic job?

No one is going to hire you or not because of what one person heard you say in a conference presentation. But wouldn’t it be great if someone listening to your presentation were able to say, “There are some really interesting people on the market right now in this area. I heard a couple of good papers at Congress.” the next time they were discussing possible new hires in their department?

Already have a job?

What if there were jobs opening up in your department? What kind of people would you like to join your department? You don’t want another you to compete with. But I bet you want interesting colleagues doing interesting research that complements yours. Read the program with that in mind. Dream of possibilities.

Talk to publishers

Did you ever think about why the publishers are there? Sure they sell some textbooks. But the  main reason publishers come to conferences is to build their lists.

Editors are going to sessions with the same goal you are – to find interesting people doing interesting things. They are accessible through their stall in the book fair at other times. Even if you are nowhere near ready to publish a book, chat to them about your ideas.

WARNING! Don’t get too excited about what they say. Rachel Toor, a former university press editor, has some good advice about interpreting editorese in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Take advantage of career development opportunities.

The folks at the Federation have organized Career Corner to provide helpful information that you need. There are sessions on grants, publishing, knowledge mobilization, and managing your career. These sessions are not just for graduate students.

SSHRC will have a booth in the book fair staffed by program officers. Go talk to them. Ask all those questions you have about how particular programs work.

Be kind to yourself

Conferences can be intense. Do what you have to do to make the whole experience enjoyable.

Are you an introvert? Build in quiet alone time. Find a secluded spot to eat lunch by yourself. Take one session off and go for a walk. Go back to your room for a nap and some quiet time before meeting people for dinner later.

Spending time doing self-organized stuff with friends and colleagues is a valuable use of your time. You don’t have to be in a formally organized session every possible minute of the day.

Try to eat well and get some good sleep.

This post is based on one first published May 6, 2009.

One of my recent posts for the Careers Cafe at University Affairs compared life to a video game.

Video game developers write stories in a different way to novelists. Their stories need to be flexible and respond to the decisions the player makes at each stage of the game.

Each career decision you make takes you to a new “level” with things to learn, relationships to build, experience, skills and knowledge to collect. You will use all of those things to make decisions that will take you somewhere else.

Like a video game, you pass through some levels relatively easily and quickly, while others take longer to figure out.

Go read the whole thing. I can wait.

A few people reacted a bit badly to that, telling me that they always end up dead in those video games. And that you don’t get more than one life in real life.

This stumped me for a bit. But then Pace Smith came to the rescue!!! (Pace is a gamer and has a more than rudimentary grasp on these things.)

As I understand it, “Dead” in a video game is more like “Well, that didn’t work out.” in real life. So you really do get more than one life. Or, as Pace puts it, there is always a way forward.

In a video game, when you come across a wall that’s too high for you to jump over, there’s always a way forward.

Maybe you can dig a tunnel. Maybe there’s a secret door. Maybe you can get a boost from something else in the room.

Try everything you can think of, and a few more things to boot. Don’t give up.

Sometimes the way forward is roundabout, like “come back later when you have the jump boots,” but the jump boots always exist and it’s always possible for you to get them – some way or another.

Again, go read the whole thing.

Why am I talking about this?

Although I don’t play video games this metaphor tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how I do what I do.

I genuinely believe there is always a way forward. Neither the destination or the way may be what you thought they were going to be but if you are stuck and frustrated, I can guarantee you that there is both a forward and a way to get there.

What I do is help you figure out what those are.

Sometimes that looks like a boost to get over the wall. Sometimes it looks like asking you whether you need to get over this wall at all. Sometimes it’s about helping you find the jump boots.

The characters I work best with are those who have graduate degrees in the social sciences or humanities. If that’s you, you can learn more about what I do by clicking that “Services for Individuals” tab up there.

The statement of Fermat’s Last Theorem does not strike us as intrinsically important or interesting — it just states that a certain type of equation never can be solved with natural numbers. What are undoubtedly interesting and important are all the deep mathematical ideas, many of which led to new branches of mathematics, that were discovered during attempts to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. Although Fermat’s Last Theorem has not yet been used for practical purposes, the new theories developed to attack it turned out to be valuable in many practical technological advances. Within the aesthetics of mathematics, it is difficult to determine which questions are more important that others.
(Burger & Starbird, The Heart of Mathematics, 2000: p 76)

Last week I talked about how the culture of academic work works against the clear articulation of your intended outcomes. That’s not the only problem.

Most academic research is funded based on one criterion:

The likely significance of the contribution to knowledge.

From our vantage point in the 21st century, we can see that in the 350+ years it took mathematicians to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem, some incredibly important contributions to both mathematical and practical knowledge were produced.

But if you were sitting on a peer review committee and knew you could only fund about a quarter of the applicants would you fund anyone to work on it?

And if you were applying for funding to work on it (before the proof was found in 1994), how would you make the case that you were likely to make a significant contribution to knowledge?

How can you determine significance before you’ve done the work?

Image (c) Amy Crook, used with permission.

The key to the answer is in your motivation to tackle this particular question in the first place.

Presumably you don’t think it’s a waste of time to do what you plan to do. You aren’t particularly interested in taking public money to sit in your office thinking about unimportant things.

What makes you think that this is not a waste of your time?

This is not a rhetorical question. The adjudication committee wants to know.

Your grant application needs to lay out for the adjudication committee your best guess as to what you are going to find when you dive into that archive or grapple with those theoretical texts. It also needs the executive summary version of why you think that, based on what we (meaning you and your peers) already know.

The significance might not be in answering your question

As I understand it, finding the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem was not as significant to mathematicians as all the other cool stuff they figured out in the attempt.

Mathematicians actually don’t care as much about answers as the general public think they do. Like most humanities and social science professors (and probably scientists) they really like better questions, unexpected findings, and so on.

Consider your research question. Is the answer to that question the most significant thing that will come out of your research? Or is pursuing that question likely to lead to significant contributions on the way?

Talk about those. In fact, when you articulate your big research question, follow it up with a clear statement of some of those “on the way there” contributions. You won’t know for sure what they are until you’ve done the work, but you have a pretty good sense of what they might be now. And good reasons to think so.

Interestingly, looked at this way, the fact that other people have worked on or are working on this question without solving it can now be presented as positive: These people worked on it and found x, which was significant because a. These people found y, which was significant because b. This shows that significant contributions come from grappling with this question.

Remember what peer review means

In articulating the likely significance (scholarly and/or practical) of your proposed research, remember that you are speaking to your peers.

The members of the adjudication committee are like you. The fact that your mother doesn’t understand why this research is significant is not relevant.

Can you explain it to peers, even peers who are not working on similar problems but are working in the same discipline? Check the composition of the adjudication committee for the particular funding competition and write for that audience.

I can help

I’ve been helping researchers with SSHRC grants since 2005. I’m not an editor or a grant writer. I’m a coach. I can coach you through this process.

We start with a telephone conversation where I can help you articulate the objectives, among other things. Then I support you through the process of writing the narrative parts of the proposal, right up to a full draft.

More details about how grant support works.

This post was first published on May 4, 2011. It has been edited.

I was reading a blog post about hiring in a small business and this paragraph resonated with conversations I’ve had with researchers.

I have a love/hate relationship with the word “delegate”. It implies that my time is SO valuable that I need to get rid of all kinds of crap in order to do “important” work. And that I should just hire people to shove that crap onto. I do not believe in that. … I believe that I am a genius at some things and not others. And that I need to hire geniuses in the other areas. With such a small crew, I cannot afford to have mediocre people working for me. We are small and powerful because we are a team of geniuses. Not one genius with a bunch of low-paid appendages doing her bidding.

via Blisstitudinal hiring.

Applying this principle to your research

It’s a bit different when you think about research assistants because one purpose of hiring them is to provide apprenticeship opportunities. But that just extends this perspective rather than negating it.

What areas are you a genius at?

How did you learn those skills? And how could you create the conditions in which you could pass them on to others?

This is the cornerstone of the apprenticeship model. We can only learn so much in a classroom. Then we need to practice, under the supervision of a master, to really solidify that knowledge and develop our skills.

How can you take students with a certain amount of classroom training (which you can specify in the job description) and provide high quality opportunities for them to use that knowledge in a real research project?

What areas are not really your strength?

There is no shame in not being good at something that is crucial to the success of your research project. There is only shame if you hide that weakness and do that aspect of the work poorly.

You may know a lot about some things and have developed excellent research skills. Some of your students will bring knowledge and experience that you don’t have. That knowledge and experience can make your research more successful.

This can be small things. One of my clients once hired a student who had been a dental receptionist before coming back to university. Her experience at setting up meetings (and making reminder calls) greatly improved the process of conducting research interviews and resulted in fewer no-shows.

Your students may have computer skills that would be valuable to your project. When I was in high school there were no websites. When your students were in high school, many of them were designing and building websites. They may be able to program iPhone apps, too.

Yes, you could learn to do these things, but is that the best use of your time? And will you be a genius at it? And why shouldn’t you be an apprentice to your student for this stuff while they are being an apprentice to you for other things.

Are students the best people for this?

As a researcher you are expected to provide apprenticeship opportunities for your students. But some of the help you need may not be done best by students.

Check the eligibility guidelines for your funds. It may be permissable to hire other kinds of staff. You may even be able to pool funds with colleagues to hire an administrative assistant on a reasonable part-time contract. And then work with a wider group of colleagues to ensure there is enough money coming in to give that administrative assistant some job security.

You may already have the resources to do this

Internal research funds.

Independent study options where students can be involved in research for course credit.

University programs designed to give students valuable research or work experience. (You may need to support a student applying.)

Ask around and see what’s possible.

You may need to think differently about what the student might do, especially if the funding requires them to have an independent project. Go back to the apprenticeship idea. What could they do under your supervision that would develop their skills and contribute to your larger program of research?

Think big.

If you are applying for a grant think about what you could do if you had more resources.

What would enable you to do your best work? What kind of team would produce the best results?

Start with your ideal. Then make compromises based on the budget you are awarded, the personnel available, etc.

Related Posts:

Why budgets are frustrating

Looking at budgets differently

Don’t delegate what you love doing (Marissa Bracke)

This post was first published July 1, 2011. It has been edited.