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Programme – Engagement, Influencing and Impact training 2025

20-02-25

Engagement, influencing and impact training for Danida supported researchers 2025
Dates of training/online:

Training 1:
On Wednesdays: 5, 12, 19, 26 March
10am and 12pm CET.

Training 2:
On Thursdays: 6, 13, 20, 27 March
10am and 12pm CET.

The global challenges of today call for knowledge sharing and collaboration across countries, sectors, and disciplines.

The greatest challenges of our time won’t be solved by knowledge locked away in journals or libraries – they require action. Research has the power to drive real change, but only when it reaches the right people and is put to use.

To create meaningful impact, researchers can put that knowledge into action by engaging with communities, policymakers, businesses, and civil society who can use it. But how do you identify the right audiences, the most effective methods, and the best timing to ensure your work makes a difference? This course equips you with the skills to move research from theory to action, helping you transform knowledge into real-world solutions.

Five key principles of the training:

    1. The sessions provide accessible and practical guidance for time-pushed researchers, with a focus on facilitating peer learning and exploration of ideas in context.
    2. Through the course, you will develop your own communications and impact strategy and you will tasked with submitting it for written feedback.
    3. You will also be tasked with talking about your research goals in a clear, salient and lively way in a 60 Sec elevator pitch to the cross-continental community of Danida supported researchers.
    4. Resources, templates and links will be provided to enable your learning to translate into action.
    5. The facilitator delivering the course, Rowena Harding, will be available for a 30 minute drop-in at the end of each session for advice and consultancy how to tailor the course content to your project and context . She will also be available to answer email queries throughout the course period (and immediately afterwards).

The Engagement, Influencing and Impact training for Danida supported researchers will strengthen your skills in engagement and outreach for impact. It will help your research having greater impact with the stakeholders you are trying to reach.

Programme:

5 or 6 March / Session 1

5 or 6 March / Session 1:
What is research engagement and impact? What can engagement achieve?

Aim:
Focus on understanding what can be meant by engagement, and understanding what is an impact goal.

Including sessions, case studies and group work on:
Defining approaches to engagement
Defining your impact goal

12 or 13 March / Session 2

12 or 13 March / Session 2:
Engaging the right people

Aim:
How to identify the stakeholders of your impact goal

Including sessions, case studies and group work on:

Stakeholder mapping: finding the right people
Building relationships
Crafting the right message
Developing an impact strategy

19 or 20 March / Session 3

19 or 20 March / Session 3:
Engagement tactics

Aim:
Explore practical ways that researchers can engage with stakeholders to achieve impact.

Including sessions, case studies and group work on:
Different engagement activities for different audiences over the lifetime of a project
Creative ideas to engage with less work in different settings, cultures, environments
How to engage policy audiences and questions
Further developing your impact strategy

26 or 27 March / Session 4

26 or 27 March / Session 4:
How you know you’re making a difference

Aim: Identify ways you can check your engagement activities are working

Including sessions, case studies and group work on:

Understanding the importance of timing
Monitoring and evaluation for transformational change
Understanding micro impacts
Further developing your impact strategy
Sessions and skills tailored to participant’s needs…and where to next!?

Facilitator:

The seminars are planned and implemented in collaboration with the Impact Consultancy. Consultant Rowena Harding is a former journalist and public relations practitioner who has spent the last 20 years
delivering strategic communications and marketing campaigns for development and social justice
NGOs, research institutes and campaigning organisations. She has delivered training and support
to global development researchers in the UK, Africa and Asia looking to increase the impact of their
research and has been recently working with government-funded initiatives to increase their reach with
civil society groups. She has been embedded within the Global Development Institute at the University
of Manchester, and appreciates the many time pressures on today’s researchers. She hopes to help
researchers gain confidence in getting their research where it needs to go!

 

(Tentative) guest speakers with relevant practical experience to each session’s theme will broaden the perspectives:

Week 1:
6 and 7 March: Dr. Tine Gammeltoft & Dr. Nguyễn Thị Thuý Hạnh 

Week 2:
12 March: Dr Katja Lindskov Jacobsen & Dr. Kamal Deen TBC
13 March: Dr. Jan Vang Brambini Pedersen & Abu Hamja

Week 3:
19 and 20 March: Ann Kingiri

Week 4:
26 and 27 March: Annette Skovsted Hansen & George Acheampong

Further questions
You are welcome to contact event@dfcentre.dk, if you have questions related to this programme.

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