From equitable partnerships to shifting the power: how R2HC’s thinking has evolved over 10 years
When the R2HC was established, we envisaged that bringing researchers and humanitarian practitioners together would lead to increased uptake of research and impact on humanitarian policy and practice. Over time, it became apparent that the process of researchers and practitioners co-producing research was not in itself sufficient to enable research impact. More support and resources were required to achieve this.
Developing our research impact support offer
We found that a range of enablers needed to be in place to facilitate evidence use – such as a demand for research from humanitarian stakeholders, or established relationships between research partners. Particular strategies for research uptake also need to be applied by research teams, such as communication and engagement activities. These strategies were not always within easy reach of researchers or humanitarian practitioners, and required specific skills and knowledge to be developed.
This led to several changes to the programme, including the addition of new requirements for R2HC funding. In 2016, we introduced budget allocations on every grant for research uptake activities. Later, we added the requirement for a Research Uptake Focal Point in research teams with relevant competencies and responsibilities, such as communications, advocacy, or community engagement.
We also responded to demand from our grantees for support with research uptake. In 2017 we began to provide guidance, tools, and resources for research teams to better understand and plan for research impact. The following year, we commissioned our Research Impact Toolkit, adapted by the RAPID Programme team within the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). We also created a dedicated role within the R2HC team to deliver grantee support to grantees and to develop the R2HC’s own capabilities and resources in research uptake and impact. With this role in place we began delivering research impact workshops to grantees, and by 2020 it was an expectation that out of these workshops, all grantees develop a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy mapping the pathway to impact for their study.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we turned our support materials into online courses. Today, we deliver our research impact support through a mix of peer-learning webinars, online courses, and 1:1 workshops focused primarily on stakeholder engagement and research communications. Two new online courses were published this year in response to emerging priorities and grantee demand, covering social media for research communications and community engagement for research uptake.
Capturing our learning
In 2021, our first piece of analysis on research impact was published: From Knowing to Doing :evidence use in the humanitarian sector. This learning paper drew on literature and expertise from across the humanitarian sector, and has strengthened our approach to grant-making and supporting grantees. Insights from the paper have included: the need to better understand the role of researchers from the Global South and humanitarian actors in enabling research impact; the importance of ‘knowledge broker’ roles in humanitarian organisations; and the role that humanitarian networks, clusters, platforms and working groups play in socialising research. Informed by this learning, in 2023 we launched an Uptake and Impact Small Grants funding call, inviting current and past grantees to apply for additional funding to deliver new research uptake activities that could maximise the impact of their research.
We recognised that understanding and documenting how research impact happens is crucial in being able to guide others to do the same. We began internally evaluating this in 2019, and in 2020 produced five Research Impact Case Study evaluations that documented the impacts of completed research studies on humanitarian policy and practice. This work has multiplied in subsequent years, now standing at a collection of 20 published case studies. Based on analysis of the case studies and our ten years of experience, we now have a Research Impact Framework , designed to provide guidance and inspiration to researchers and other stakeholders. The Framework outlines enablers and success strategies for delivering impact in humanitarian research.
In the future, tools and guidance based on the framework are planned, with a particular focus on integrating expertise on knowledge transfer and research communications emerging from the Global South. We want to ensure our approach to research impact remains relevant to all studies that we fund and support, and to the increasing diversity of organisations and people involved in humanitarian response.
