On 31 October, the ENLIGHT University Alliance has launched the call for Impact Awards to recognize and give visibility to ENLIGHT partner universities’ initiatives that are exemplars in planning for and achieving impact. Applications are invited from teams at ENLIGHT partner universities.
Are you interested? Do you want to know more about the ENLIGHT Impact Awards? Please read the call text, and contact your ENLIGHT University Coordinator for further information.
ENLIGHT will concede six Impact Awards, including ideally one award in each of the six ENLIGHT flagship domains. Applications are invited from teams at ENLIGHT universities, which must be nominated by their university through a locally defined internal selection process. The representatives of the awarded teams will be identified as ENLIGHT Impact Ambassadors and become members of the ENLIGHT Impact Ambassadors Network.
The ENLIGHT Impact Awards will be presented during the ENLIGHT Impact Conference at the University of Groningen on the 27th and 28th March 2025. The ENLIGHT Impact Conference will bring together international impact experts and practitioners and will be the setting in which the ENLIGHT Impact Awards will be recognised and celebrated.
Each ENLIGHT Impact Award recognises the exemplar impact work of the successful team awardees. More concretely, it provides:
- Increased visibility to your research impact approach, pathway and project, through the ENLIGHT website, the ENLIGHT Impact Repository, ENLIGHT Impact Ambassadors webpage, ENLIGHT social media, international workshops and conferences (e.g. ENLIGHT Impact Conferences).
- Financial support to attend relevant international workshops/ conferences. These workshops/conferences could be identified by either the awarded or ENLIGHT impact teams.
- The possibility of being part of a wide-reaching networking of other ENLIGHT universities impact ambassadors, in close contact with the ENLIGHT impact team and with the possibility of connecting also with other impact networks where ENLIGHT is represented (e.g. FOREU thematic group on impact led by ENLIGHT, AESIS network for Advancing and Evaluating the Societal Impact of Science, etc.);
- The possibility of knowledge and good practices sharing and mutual learning.
- The opportunity to support and influence ENLIGHT impact work.
ENLIGHT and Impact
ENLIGHT is a European University Alliance to promote equitable quality of life, sustainability and global engagement through Higher Education transformation. ENLIGHT brings together ten research-intensive universities from ten European countries (University of the Basque Country, University of Bern, University of Bordeaux, Comenius University Bratislava, University of Galway, Ghent University, University of Göttingen, University of Groningen, University of Tartu, Uppsala University).
Impact is at the core of the ENLIGHT mission. One of ENLIGHT’s key objectives is to promote a culture of impact both within and beyond its partner universities, by developing good practices of impact-directed management, integrating impact into higher education, research, innovation and societal engagement.
In ENLIGHT we understand IMPACT as the effects or changes we can see (demonstrate, measure, capture), beyond academia (in society, economy, environment) which happen because of an activity in the higher education environment (caused by, contributed to, attributable to). Impact is intrinsically linked to transformation and to transformative initiatives, programmes, projects, activities developed in the university context. Impact may look and operate slightly differently across disciplines, and for fundamental versus applied research, but ultimately is about connecting academia to changes in the real world.
For more information about our ENLIGHT impact work, please consult https://impact.enlight-eu.org or contact us at