Adjusting to Impact: A study of research impact evaluation in Norway

Abstract: Policymakers are increasingly demanding that their investments in research and knowledge production should yield returns. The interest of evaluating the societal impact of research has grown rapidly as research funders request evidence that their investments lead to public benefits. This thesis is a study of how the Research Council of Norway has operationalized such demands into new evaluation practices revolving around the concept of Impact. The material to this study consists of one evaluation report that introduced Impact into Norwegian research evaluation, the council’s planning procedures in grant applications in addition to four expert interviews. Informed by practice-oriented document analysis, it highlights the transformative capacity of documents and emphasises the ways in which evaluation functions as tools to make visible phenomena, implement policies and transform researchers and their projects into alignment with Impact demands through processes of translation. Informed by actor-network analysis, I explore how evaluation stages and enacts realities into being.