The messy business of impact for the social sciences: fear and failure, stealth and seeds

Failure is an inevitable part of any academic career. This may feel especially true for those researchers working to have an impact on politics and policy, with research work always vulnerable to rejection or disregard. Matthew Flinders explains how such precarity brings into sharp focus the messy business of impact for the social sciences: the great problem of sowing seeds in a political context is you can never be absolutely sure they will germinate. This situation carries the risk of decisions regarding the investment of institutional resources being taken with an eye not on the intellectual vibrancy of a project or the need to cultivate a culture of engaged scholarship but on a short-term calculation as to whether the outlay is likely to deliver a high-quality impact case study.