REF impact and the discipline of Politics and International Studies

On 22–23 November 2016, the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick hosted a lively conference on research ‘impact’, a key component of the Research Excellence Framework (REF)—the periodic peer review in UK Higher Education to evaluate the quality of academic work, in turn determining how nearly £2 billion of annual research funding is allocated among competing institutions. In contrast to many other conferences and workshops about impact, a feature of REF that has generated much fevered commentary across the university sector about the public value of academic research, our event was tightly focused on impact as it relates to the discipline of Politics and International Studies. Featuring presentations from a range of academic and non-academic constituencies—including journalists, government officials, and representatives from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE),1 the creator and (at the time of writing) controller of the REF—conversation was particularly timely, owing to the publication, a few months earlier, of the eagerly awaited Stern Review on the future of university research assessment. This special issue contains selected papers from the conference, with the goal of shedding light on how the discipline as a whole, but also its varied composite parts, is responding to the impact agenda in the lead up to REF2021, now looming close on the horizon. We are grateful to the contributors for their participation and for opening up many new facets to the ongoing dialogue about impact