Lee Elliot Major: How to reach new audiences and create impact with research

Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE is not your typical academic. Working as a national journalist for ten years and serving as chief executive of the Sutton Trust before entering academe, engaging with external audiences has always been a core part of his work. This experience has influenced his campaigning work as the UK’s first Professor of Social Mobility to improve the prospects for young people from poorer backgrounds. 

For Lee, these past lives shape the way he engages with research. As a Professor of Practice based in the School of Education, his projects focus on two things: building evidence that can influence policy changes, and developing practical strategies to help schools or employers to improve prospects for their pupils or staff. The skills Lee built up through his earlier career, he says, are fundamental to these aims, helping him communicate and develop his research in ways that resonate with policymakers, educators, and the public. We spoke to him to find out why.

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What stands out, at first, is just how much the man has written. Regularly writing in the Guardian, The Times and educational supplements, Lee has also published several award-winning books, such as Social Mobility and its Enemies, The Good Parent Educator, and most recently, Equity in Education. Clearly, his prolific publishing record helps his work create national impact – reaching teachers and policymakers across the UK.

The key to that, he says, is knowing how to communicate well.

If you want to create impact with your research, you should spend as much time thinking about how it will be communicated

– Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE

“As a journalist for over ten years, I learned the skills of wider dissemination. Writing articles to deadline. Writing them so that they connect with people.” These skills, however, are often fundamentally different to those involved with academic writing. “Everything you assume for [journalistic] communication and writing is almost the polar opposite of what you do when you’re writing for an academic publication.”

His advice for researchers, then, is to shift focus. “If you want to create impact with your research, you should spend as much time thinking about how it will be communicated.” While research is invaluable for generating new insights and knowledge, making sure that it is picked up by the world outside of academia is a different process altogether. But a few things can help.

One tip is to start thinking about your research in terms of personal stories. “If you can involve a person in your writing, someone who is affected by the issue or whose story brings it to life, this will attract readers.” In a recent article ahead of the UK general election, for example, Lee profiled the educational background of prime ministers past and present, highlighting the country’s lack of state-educated PMs and, in turn, engaging more people with a key determinant of social mobility: education.

Finding the right language when writing for publications is important too. Once you’ve settled on the findings you want to communicate, “language that provokes interest and emotion [helps], as does using the active voice, rather than the passive one – as we often do in academia.”  

Ultimately, communicating your research well involves thinking carefully about “the tangible real implications for everyday people.” For this, Lee suggests putting yourself in the shoes of the public and policymakers, thinking about how it affects them, and then cutting your findings down into three practical pointers, such as policy recommendations or implications for people.  

Doing this can help your research stand out in a competitive media landscape. In a big report for the Nuffield Foundation, for example, Lee looked at learning loss after the Covid-19 Pandemic. “In there, we had proposals for government and some stark findings about the likely GCSE attainment gaps to come. But the thing that really got picked up in the media was one line in the report which said we should consider shrinking the summer school holidays from six to five weeks, to address holiday hunger. That got huge media attention and is just another reminder of the fact you’ve got to find ways that connect with people.”  

But media aside, there are other ways researchers can make an impact. To engage policymakers with their research findings, Lee suggests reaching out directly and making personal connections. “While you can submit recommendations to Parliamentary Select Committees, I think the real influences lies much more in [having] personal interactions [with ministers and policy advisers].”  

Doing this successfully, he says, involves knowing what policy changes they want to see and finding a point of overlap within your own research. “Where you can, approach ministers and their offices to try and arrange a face-to-face conversation. But do your homework first. Watch speeches and policy announcements, then develop some real policy recommendations, which your research can provide the evidence base for… rather than thinking the research will speak for itself.”

It is a long term game, but the benefits are worth it. Just recently, UCAS announced reforms to the personal statement written by university applicants following years of campaigning by Lee to change the system. Now, the South West Social Mobility Commission Lee helped to establish is aiming to improve prospects for future generations of young people across the peninsula.

 

Written by Ben Dickenson Bampton.

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More Information

Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE is a Professor of Practice in the School of Education, University of Exeter.

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