Hi all, I know many of you are probably very focused on teaching right now and not so much research but I'd love to talk to other people involved in impact work from an academic framework. I do quite a lot of this and I know very few other people who do and I find that I increasingly encounter dilemmas and have nowhere really to talk about them!
My main current dilemma is that I speak on an agenda which affects organisations and the people who work in them (probably fairly obvious what it could be but I won't say just in case). And I am fairly often asked to speak to them about that. I have become increasingly convinced (well, sort of always was) that the solutions to this problem can only really be found in the political sphere and more than that, the interventions many organisations make play a tiny role in generating change, but this may be largely a means of legitimating the status quo.
I have started making this point more insistently in related talks and ... not surprisingly, it doesn't go down too well! To some extent, that's kind of the point, as this is an agenda that organisations would prefer to suggest is not political. Another problem is that there are a lot of people in organisations working in good faith to do what they can and there is a danger that I somehow really undermine them and their work. And I do get feedback that what I say is not constructive and that they need practical help and advice.
I feel a bit that I have a choice between sticking to my convictions and having fewer opportunities to share them or diluting the message and being heard by more people.
Does anybody else navigate these or similar dilemmas? I'd be really interested to know how you handle them if so.