Humanising research in the era of reality disavowal, policy abstraction and academic commodification

How do we achieve 'impact'? Humanising research in the era of reality disavowal, policy abstraction and academic commodification

More and more, as academics and researchers, we are encouraged to demonstrate how our research and professional practices ‘generate impact’: how our knowledge and efforts direct potential social change for people, communities and/or governments.

We entered the game thinking we were going to change the world, find out about victimisation, suffering and exclusion and, with that knowledge, we thought politicians and policymakers would listen, be disturbed and work tirelessly to alter things. But, somehow, we are instead encouraged to do never-ending administrational tasks, spend time in numerous meetings related to improving university metrics and, first and foremost, learn that any ‘change’ we want to seek on the world must come through generating research grant money.

We become the small cogs which work the machinery of academic capitalism. We complement this by writing dry policy briefings which amass limited downloads in cyberspace while being prepared to wait months, even years to publish our work into ‘high-impact-factor journals’. We also guest star in podcasts, tweets, selfies and the like – anything to create attention to our ‘impactful’ activities.

We may be lucky enough to get a few likes and shares because, despite what we might offer, we live in a time where the best commitments the political elite make to easing people’s pain are damaging fiscal and economic endeavours which sustain their own power and turn the screw on everyone else below them. Perhaps to keep our hope alive that things can change, we are thrown media briefings at which shallow promises are made, broken and only result in minor tweaks to existing social policies.

With all this in mind, how can we continue to be motivated to do important research which sheds light on the dark, neglected corners of the world?

In the face of so many impediments, how do we achieve ‘real-life impact’?

Professor Daniel Briggs' inaugural lecture explores these dilemmas and offers a blueprint for budding academics and researchers to achieve ‘impact’ and retain their sanity while avoiding ‘burnout’ and ‘discipline disorientation’ at the same time.

About the Speaker

Professor Daniel Briggs is an experienced researcher, writer and inter-disciplinary academic who uses ethnographic methods (observation, interviewing) to study social problems. He has dedicated much of the last 25 years to spending time with and studying homeless drug users, terminally-ill patients, refugees, prostitutes, gypsies, gang members, young offenders and anti-social behaviour, political activists and protestors and economic migrants.

 

One of his books, Dead End Lives: Drugs and Violence in the City Shadows (2017, Policy Press), won the Division of International Criminology’s Outstanding Book Award 2018 (selected by the American Society of Criminology). Other recent monographs include Climate Changed: Refugee Border Stories and the Business of Misery (2020, Routledge) and Hotel Puta: A Hardcore Ethnography of a Luxury Brothel (2022, RJ4All Publications).

 

He is also the lead co-author of Researching the Covid-19 Pandemic (2021, Bristol University Press) and Lockdown: Social Harm in the Covid-19 Era (2021, Palgrave), and The New Futures of Exclusion (2023, Palgrave). 

He has just published Sheltering Strangers: Critical Memoirs of hosting Ukrainian Refugees (2025, Policy Press) and has co-edited in press The Lost: Life, Loss and Legacy in Criminology (2026, Bristol University Press).

 

He is currently researching the luxury yacht industry and obese patients who seek low-cost, weight-loss surgery abroad.