Research Engagement and Impact

Through our REI (Research Engagement and Impact) strand of work, LAB collaborates with university researchers to disseminate their work ‘beyond the campus’ to wider publics, in a simple, impactful way. Projects have included a podcast, a photobook, international webinars, dissemination support, and in-person events.

Partners have included King’s College London, LSE/Universidad de Chile, Universities of Lancaster, Cardiff, Northumbria, and East Anglia, London Metropolitan, and leading academics including Cathy McIlwaine, Antonio Ioris, Marcos Colón, Cornelia Gräbner, Megan Ryburn, Katy Jenkins, and Pia Rigirozzi.

What’s at stake?

• If a reader is not familiar with the language of research, how can they connect to the subject and act upon the findings?
• If there is no conversation with the general public, how can research effect wider change?
• If research participants’ voices aren’t amplified, how can projects benefit them as well as the researchers and the wider public?
• If policymakers don’t encounter articles and cannot easily absorb their content, how can they implement the knowledge contained in them?
• If a journalist can’t access research, how can they share it with the public?

Why LAB?

• We can provide evidence of engagement and impact beyond academic circles.
• We can provide opportunities for academics to share the public interest aspects of their work.
• We have a track record of combining quality and rigourous research in accessible ways.
• We provide a full range of media skills, offering podcasts, video, photobooks and digital archives.

Publishing your research with LAB

You will find a number of innovative ways you can publish your research with LAB in our REI Presentation.

Online article publishing
Writing an article for LAB is another great way to share your research with a wider audience. All of LAB’s articles are written in English in simple, non-expert language, meaning your research is accessible to more people. Your article will sit within a wider umbrella of information about struggles for justice in Latin America. It will be read by students, professors, curious citizens, travellers, and journalists internationally. Multiple articles from a single project can be collected into a ‘series’ as LAB has done with the CAMeNA Blog, working with the University of Lancaster and the Academic Center for the Memory of Our America based at the Autonomous University of Mexico City. We can help you to create a piece which hooks the reader and conveys your research in compelling, non-academic writing, for a general public. Read our guidelines here.

Book publishing
Are you interested in publishing an accessible book about your research under the joint imprint of LAB and Practical Action Publishing, at a cover price far below that of mainstream academic publishers, and thus accessible to a wider readership? You’ve come to the right place. We can also translate your book (we work with English, Spanish, and Portuguese) and enable simultaneous publication in two or three languages. While non-academic in form and language, LAB books maintain the same standards of meticulous research and referencing applied by university presses. Two examples are: The Amazon in Times of War, and Moving Forward/ Salir Adelante/ Seguir Adiante.

Website publishing
LAB can create book and project websites, generally at a fraction of the cost of creating your own, and with much greater flexibility and immediacy than is possible within most university websites. Examples include: wrv.org.uk (with Kings College London) and Hilos Fronterizos (with Dr Megan Ryburn). Such sites are generally sub-sections of LAB’s main website, lab.org.uk, but can retain their own branding, as well as showcasing articles covering the same subjects published elsewhere on LAB. New and follow-up research and writing then has a ready-made ‘container’ to which it can be added.