It's not enough for research to be useful to policy actors, we must try to actually influence change

There is no doubt that good communications and framing research and evidence for your audience is important to influencing policy and having research impact. But shouldn't we be aiming higher than producing and packaging research that simply meets the demands of policy actors? Surely what we actually want to do is influence change, not reinforce social and political norms? James Georgalakis argues that research and researchers need to challenge dominant paradigms and expose inconvenient truths. Relationships, networks, and bodies of knowledge play a far more significant role in change processes than short-term communications campaigns on specific research reports.