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Secrecy is no barrier to impact
“Impact is like a garden; you potter about and give it constant attention, continually tending, from the very beginning of the project. And like a garden, if you think about the design at the start, and treat it well during all of its stages of development, it will be reaping benefits for many years to come.” - Professor Richard Aldrich, University of Warwick
At first glance, a research project analysing the public image of the CIA seems suspiciously like fodder for conspiracy theorists with little scope for impact beyond a niche audience.
“Not so,” says Richard Aldrich, Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick. “In our post 9/11 world where security is the concern of every citizen there is much that we the wider public, who are now both providers and consumers of security intelligence, can learn from the history of the CIA. For governments, an understanding of how the CIA manages its public profile can help them form strategies for their own secret service agencies to interact and communicate with the public. This is historical research with great potential for wider societal and policy impact.”
Professor Aldrich was lead director on Landscapes of Secrecy, an half-million pound AHRC-funded research collaboration between the universities of Warwick and Nottingham, which explores the history of the CIA’s public image. Such was its success that Professor Aldrich has been awarded a one-year follow-on grant by the AHRC. The subject of the project was the secret intelligence service, yet the team took a very open approach to their pathways to impact. The first grant culminated in a two-day public conference at the East Midlands Conference centre which attracted 300 delegates, followed by a one-day conference for PhD students. Fifty percent of those attending were unconnected to research or academia and paid £250 to attend. The team used mailings to historical and political societies and third sector organisations, as well as targeted internet marketing, to attract their audience.
Audio recordings of the conference were taken and are available free to download via popular sites like Wikipedia. The podcasts have had more than 16,000 downloads to date.
For the follow-on grant the audience is government and policymakers such as the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the UK’s most secret intelligence agency, GCHQ. Professor Aldrich says that his experience has been quite different and he has learned a lot, particularly the importance of investing time in relationship building.
“You need to cultivate your ‘impact buddies’”, he says. “People tend to judge their networking success at conferences by the number of cards they collect. I don’t think that’s the right approach. The trick is to find the people you have already met and get to know them better,build a personal relationship. Then when you need to call them up for advice or a favour, they’ll remember you and be more inclined to help.”
The downside, of course, is that people in Whitehall tend to move on every few years, so it helps to have a variety of routes into government. One such route has been to partner with an organisation called the Industry and Parliament Trust. The Trust has helped the follow-on team to host a small informal networking dinner at the Houses of Parliament, attended by a handful of carefully chosen MPs and people from the security industry.
The research team is also partnering with a Swiss think tank that specialises in producing policy handbooks - in a huge range of languages - on how to run intelligence services in a democratic and accountable way for the new countries that did not exist 20 years ago. “You don’t have to create every pathway yourself,” comments Professor Aldrich, “piggy-backing on your partners networks can be an effective dissemination channel and create a pathway to impact that you had not even imagined.”
Professor Aldrich points to less quantifiable but nonetheless important pathways to impact created by developing the early career researchers involved in the original grant. One of them is now advising the International Spy Museum in Washington and two others have been awarded fellowships. He says:“Don’t overlook the knowledge transfer within your own research team. They are potential powerful pathways to impact: who knows where they will go afterwards and where that might lead.”
Professor Aldrich is supportive of researchers being asked to think about their pathways to impact at the start of their grant. However, he warns, it takes an investment of time and attention if these pathways are to develop into more than dissemination exercises and pleasant conversations. He likens it to gardening: “You potter about and give it constant attention, continually tending, from the very beginning of the project. And like a garden, if you think about the design at the start, and treat it well during all of its stages of development, it will be reaping benefits for many years to come.”
Institution:University of Warwick
Funding council:AHRC
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Summary of research project