AHRC Impact Acceleration Account

Ulster University has been awarded £457,329 in the first round of Impact Acceleration accounts from the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC: AH/X003361/1). There were only 32 universities awarded AHRC IAAs, which received the most applications of any IAA competition.

This will allow the University to further demonstrate the benefits of Arts & Humanities research to society, culture, health and the economy. Six out of nine of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Science Research Units were judged as 100% World-leading and Internationally Excellent in REF2021, with one Unit, ranked first in the UK for world-leading impact.

The overall aim is to enrich our interdisciplinary research culture, sharing and growing best practices towards more diverse, deeper, and long-lasting impacts and subsequently; Extending research culture beyond the university sharing best practices with our research partners; Providing new space, time and opportunity for ambitious impact engagement, through three primary areas of focussed investment:

1. Interdisciplinary Research: Expanding our applied research, indicitive of practice-based creative disciplines has the potential to extend or unlock different types of outputs that are inherently impactful.
2. Screen-based and immersion: Much of our Faculty, University and Regional strategies focus on the Screen Industry. Potential exists to unlock new cultural artefacts from existing research, for example as films/TV programmes or immersive experiences for public engagement.
3. Collaborative Policy engagement: Our Social Sciences subjects are strong in this regard and can mentor Arts & Humanities subjects to accelerate broader impacts including UN SDGs and UNESCO priorities.

To enable these engagements a detailed series of activities under the following five work packages: