Impact was included in the REF2014 for the first time. However, this does not mean that academics have not been actively engaged in communicating and influencing the world around them before that. The final dimension of impact explored in this book is historical perspective via interviews with 16 Social Policy professors reflecting on the impact of their work over the course of their careers. These interviews provide a critical framing of impact by drawing attention to the time lags that go well beyond the impact timetable given in the REF, the often partial adoption of research, the use of knowledge brokers and, perhaps what is more important, a clear sense of being part of an epistemic community and a clear sense of ambition for the scale of impact and the nature of the relationship with policymakers.

Through looking back over the course of their career, the interviewees are able to contextualise their influence and impact over time. This provides a foil for a critical review of the definition and implementation of impact assessment as part of the REF2014. The academics were also able to reflect on the impact of their work over their professional lifecourse, rather than in an artificial set period. The interviews highlight the importance of the political environment, the composition of political actors, the developmental phase of the welfare state, the wider context of HE at particular points in time and, more specifically, the extent of individualisation within universities. The majority of these points will be applicable to the other social sciences as well, although the relevance of the development of the UK welfare state is probably particularly high amongst Social Policy compared with other disciplines.

The interviewees were generally quite critical of the concept of impact. This is partly due to the timing of the interviews, which were carried out in 2013, just as the submissions for the REF2014 were finalised. As discussed in Chapter two, acceptance levels of impact as a measurement of academic work has risen substantially since the REF2014. However, perhaps more surprising and less directly linked to the REF, it seemed to me a tale of two halves with regards to views of their own impact over the course of their careers.