Liminality, looseness and new modalities of scholarly distinction: The impacts of ‘impact’ in REF2014.

Little is known about the process of evaluating the economic and societal impact of research undertaken in university settings. In this talk I'll present accounts of the experiences of senior academics and user-assessors, populating disciplinary sub-panels spanning the humanities and social sciences, convened to judge and 'score' the impact claims of researchers from UK universities as a new component of research evaluation within the specific context of the UK's performance based research funding system, the Research Excellence Framework (REF). I argue that this accounts signpost the emergence of a new and liminal space in the production of scholarly ‘distinction’ that is unlike archetypal modalities of academic excellence. Analogously can be seen an emotional and intellectual vulnerability in the review process and the loosening of the structures reviewers traditionally call upon in making value-determinations that simultaneously facilitates their role as impact evaluators and creates new modalities of scholarly distinction.