Intervention: the impact agenda and human geography in UK higher education

Our focus in this intervention is on the critical yet diverse ways the recent impact agenda has been understood, approached, engaged with or resisted by geographers. In particular, we have brought this intervention together to think through some of the relationships impact has with and beyond social and cultural geography. Impact has become rapidly institutionalized within the UK Higher Education sector’s ever evolving culture of audit and corporatisation and has become directly linked to the amount of government funding universities receive. In this introduction, we outline the key aspects of impact as they have been constructed through the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) before discussing some of the debates around this issue. Finally, we highlight central themes that have emerged through the position papers presented in this intervention.