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FABSS Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Year in Review - 2025

The Life House Project Dr Georgia Bowers A&H IAA

CONTENTS 03

WELCOME

SURREY HOSTS ESRC IAA NATIONAL CONFERENCE

SHAPE-UP HUB

COMMERCIALISATION

AHRC BEING HUMAN FESTIVAL

ESRC FESTIVAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

FABSS IAA SKILLS TRAINING

IAA THEME: SUSTAINABLE PLACE

IMPACT PROJECTS A&H

IMPACT PROJECTS ESRC

16 ANNUAL REPORTING

WELCOME FABSS Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) A Year in Review 2025 Professor Andrew King, Principal Investigator, FABSS IAA 2025 has been an outstanding year for the Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences (FABSS) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), and my first full year as Principal Investigator and Chair. We commenced with a vibrant ESRC IAA annual conference, brilliantly organised by our Surrey IAA team. It was my first chance to connect with IAA colleagues from across the UK, and the three-day event was both inspiring and packed with ideas. A highlight? Taking delegates to the Watts Gallery, where we heard powerful stories from FABSSsupported impact projects and explored the gallery’s creative spaces, was a perfect way to set the tone for the conference. This year, we’ve introduced important innovations to the FABSS IAA organisation. We broadened the membership of our Board to better align with impact priorities across the Faculty and University, and we have reconstituted the Steering Group to strengthen our strategic direction. As you’ll see in this newsletter, the FABSS IAA team has had an incredibly dynamic year, funding a diverse range of impact projects, delivering an ambitious skills training programme, and hosting our most successful ESRC Festival of Social Science (FOSS) and AHRC Being Human programmes to date. Hearing the stories of real-world impact through our reporting and feedback has been truly inspiring. I’m excited to continue working with our exceptional IAA team and the wider research and innovation community as we build on this momentum in 2026, supporting, enhancing, and advancing impact and public engagement at Surrey.

I hope you enjoy this newsletter and learning more about the FABSS IAA. If you’d like to connect, have questions, or want to discover future opportunities, please reach out - we’d love to hear from you! FABSS IAA Team (Left to right): Will Salmon (Commercialisation Officer), Izzy Llewellyn (Arts & Humanities IAA Project Officer), Dr Tamsin Woodward-Smith (FABSS IAA Manager), Julia Warsap, (ESRC IAA Project Officer).

ESRC IAA CONFERENCE The year began with us hosting the 2025 ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) annual conference three energising days that brought together creativity, expertise, and collaboration. It was a privilege to welcome impact specialists from 32 UK research organisations to Guildford, where the Mandolay Hotel, University of Surrey, and Watts Gallery became backdrops for an inspiring national gathering.

We opened with a private tour of the historic Watts Gallery, featuring reflections from Professor Caroline Scarles and collaborators Vanessa Cumper, and Olivia Parker, on their ESRC IAA-funded project with partner Smartify, which explored how technology can help Arts and Heritage organisations navigate challenges and unlock new hybrid business models. This immersive cultural start flowed into a buzzing welcome dinner at Surrey’s Lakeside Restaurant on the Stag Hill campus, hosted by Professor Andrew King.

"Everything was beautifully coordinated by the Surrey team and it was a very enjoyable few days. The GSA students were brilliant! It is so useful to get together, not just for information sharing but for building relationships within and beyond clusters, and I hope it continues!"

Conference attendee

This year’s conference featured a varied and insight-rich agenda that we were proud to help shape. The programme brought together senior leaders from the ESRC alongside influential voices from academia, industry, and government. Participants engaged in a dynamic mix of panel sessions, practical workshops, and presentations, designed to spark collaboration and discussion. A standout session, delivered by Dr Tamsin Woodward-Smith and Will Salmon, brought IAA clusters together to examine the commercialisation of social science. Their creative, handson activities challenged participants to think differently about impact, inspiring new ideas and perspectives on how commercial avenues can enhance the reach and value of social science research. The conference provided opportunities to connect, reflect, and celebrate, with the GSA Singers lighting up dinner with a vibrant and memorable performance, and IAA project holders showcasing their work with exhibits in the break spaces. This was a powerful start to the year, bringing together our national community to reinforce our collective goal of generating lasting impact through social science research.

SHAPE UP HUB The SHAPE Up Hub led by Dr Tamsin Woodward-Smith and Will Salmon is an ambitious new initiative designed to transform how early-stage SHAPE impact outputs are supported and developed. Building on our progress identifying and advancing commercialisation projects across the pipeline, we uncovered a striking pattern: the point at which SHAPE projects most need support is exactly where the system offers the least of it. While TTO teams are typically focused on late-stage activity such as product launch and scaling, many promising earlystage ideas are left without the scaffolding they need to survive, let alone thrive. That insight sparked the idea for something new: a digital “incubator” designed specifically for early-stage SHAPE impact outputs, toolkits, teaching resources, CPD offers, and more. Our vision is a freemium platform that brings these outputs together in one place and connects them directly with users. By clustering offers, we can unlock economies of scale, streamlined marketing, easier promotion, and smarter use of TTO expertise, while also giving researchers a clear pathway to test, adapt, and grow their ideas. This shared platform won’t just enable early connections between researchers and users, it will also provide the conditions to spark new opportunities. Direct user requests for additional features or follow-on products could help nudge researchers further along the commercialisation journey, while generating early income streams that support continued development. At the same time, the hub could also provide a more effective way to capture essential audience metrics, strengthening REF and KEF evidence and giving institutions a clearer picture of how their impact outputs are being used. Initial HEIF funding enabled us to carry out a small pilot project in 2025 exploring user journey development and concept testing, and building a test-case prototype. In December, we applied externally to the Aspect Testbed funding call with a collaborative bid working with counterparts at the Universities of Warwick, Oxford, Cardiff, Bristol and Southampton, and partnering with GetTWOit. If successful, this will allow us to collaborate with other HEIs to test this approach with external (non-academic) audiences, and to explore the potential for the Hub concept to scale across multiple institutions (e.g. via a membership model). In a field where individual researchers often lack the funding to develop products on their own, the SHAPE Up Hub offers a practical, scalable solution, one that supports growth from the earliest stages onwards. We are excited to see this project continue to grow and scale for 2026!

COMMERCIALISATION This year has seen positive progress for FABSS Commercialisation, with a number of new projects coming forward and a noticeable increase in knowledge and confidence across the faculty. More colleagues are actively exploring how commercialisation can help deliver impact at scale. As a result, the pipeline has grown by 38% year on year, now comprising 36 projects. Of these, 16 are actively progressing through the commercial stages, from early market piloting to securing their first paying customers, while a further 20 are at the expression-of-interest stage, assessing the most appropriate route to market. We also launched the FABSS Commercialisation Fellowships, providing time buy-out for colleagues to work on their early-stage projects, and undertake training in key commercialisation concepts to progress their ventures. Dr. Michael Smalley (GSA) trained in no-coding web development to create a prototype ‘Re:Source’ app that enables theatres (or tv/film studios) to share their sets, costumes and equipment with each other, driving down costs and increasing sustainability; Maya Chew (SOC) boosted the commercial development of the Centre for Britain & Europe (CBE) by exploring business models to diversify future revenue and expanding partnerships and income for CBE’s advisory work, with clients such as Gordon Murray Automotive and the High Sheriff of Surrey. Two FABSS academics have been successful in the ESRC/AHRC SHAPE Catalyst, a 6-month accelerator programme to develop and validate early commercialisation ideas. Dr Stephen Fay (SLL) developed a prototype of the CREATION app, a creative storytelling chatbot that supports people with dementia. Building on his research, the app offers a novel way to scale an approach previously constrained by the availability of carers. Time on the SHAPE Catalyst enabled Stephen to engage with care homes, validate the concept, and develop partnerships to support the next phase of scale-up. Dr. Michael Smalley (GSA) has just joined the latest cohort of the SHAPE Catalyst, further shaping his Re:Source app following feedback from theatres of all sizes and stakeholders in the Theatre Green Book initiative. Training and capacity building have also been key areas of focus this year with 170 colleagues attending 7 internally-organised events, including our annual Commercialisation Workshop, which this year welcomed guest speaker Prof. Roberta Guerrina (Bristol) to talk about her experience as founder of spin-out company, Equal In-sight. We also ran sessions with training providers such as Skillfluence and Flint Innovation to deliver sessions on ‘Working with Industry’, ‘Introduction to Design Thinking’, and ‘How to create CPD/Training from your Research. As Hub members of the ASPECT network, we were pleased to see 21 participants in training courses such as ‘Engaging with External Partners’, ‘LinkedIn for Academics’, and ‘Creative Tools’ - in total, almost 200 people training in commercialisation skills this year! Finally, Brigitte Stangl’s (SHTM) commercialisation journey reached a major milestone with the launch of spin-out company ConnectPlayWise. Following successful progression through the iCURE programme, the company secured £300k from Innovate UK and is developing a digital platform where 7–12-year-olds build socio-emotional skills through mini-games while connecting with older adults in care homes or within families.

BEING HUMAN FESTIVAL The AHRC Being Human festival is an annual festival of the humanities that brings together researchers, performers, and communities to explore what it means to be human through a programme of exciting public engagement events. In April, the university was successfully awarded Being Human Festival Hub Institution status, securing £7,000 AHRC/British Academy funding and raising the visibility of Arts & Humanities research and public engagement at Surrey. Hubs are selected as a beacon of best practice public engagement and represent the festival in the region. They involve a range of events that display creativity, innovation, ambition, and respond to the needs of local non-specialist audiences.

“Wow! What joy! What talent! Brilliantly presented. Thank you!” Event attendee

Led by Dr Lucy Ella Rose, the programme entitled 'Between the Lines: Surrey's Hidden Histories' covered a range of arts and humanities research, providing opportunities to work collaboratively and build relationships with colleagues. Being a Festival Hub Institution allowed Surrey to benefit from additional support from the festival central team including expertise, resource, and promotional opportunities, in addition to funding.

MARINE LIFE STUDY

This year's programme consisted of 6 in-person events, including two focusing specifically on young people and families. The programme welcomed 593 attendees, a 55% increase on audience numbers from BY ANNE MARIE CARTERS last year, across 5 local venues. Event leads co-created events with 16 partners and collaborators, strengthening networks with both new and established partners. The events covered a range of topics and formats, incorporating 10 event leads from across Literature & Languages, Music & Media and GSA. Event activities included a crafternoon, flash fiction

workshop,

soundscape

Watts

Gallery,

intergenerational concert, a piano recital and literary reflections, a showcase of literary readings and performances from young, displaced people, an interactive exhibition and self-guided walk, and a screening of a new short film about dyspraxia.

SUPPORT OFFERED BY IAA TEAM TRAINING WORKSHOPS EVENT PLANNING & REFINING SUPPORT WITH COLLABORATIONS EVENT DESCRIPTIONS & COPYWRITING CREATIVE MARKETING SETTING UP OF TICKETAILOR BOX OFFICE TARGETED MARKETING TO REACH NEW AUDIENCES PAID META ADVERTISING AUDIENCE MANAGEMENT VENUE SOURCING LOGISTICAL PLANNING SUPPORT WITH DELIVERY COMMUNICATIONS & PR EVALUATION ADMIN & FINANCE

ESRC FESTIVAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

The ESRC Festival of Social Science is an annual nationwide celebration of the social sciences that connects research to everyday life, gives academics a platform to share their work with communities, and fosters a positive, outward-facing research culture.

2025 was Surrey’s most ambitious programme yet, running 26 events and exhibitions and engaging 1,251 in-person attendees, plus nearly 3,000 digital participants. Most events took place in community settings, which significantly increased reach and visibility, and the programme included exhibitions, hands-on family workshops, school activities, film screenings, talks, creative methods such as zine-making, and events developed with charities, healthcare providers, and industry partners.

MARINE LIFE STUDY

Topics ranged widely, reflecting the breadth of social science at Surrey: domestic abuse survivor experiences, sustainable flower production, harmful sexual behaviour in schools, food justice in women’s prisons, age-friendly hospitality, religious identity in healthcare, the experiences of women GPs, B Y Aapprenticeships N N E M A R Iaccess, E C A and RTE R S working lives. responsible AI use, aviation linguistics, global Audience reach grew by 40% compared with FOSS 2024, and the majority of attendees were members of the public rather than academics. Many participants reported learning something new, reconsidering their views on an issue, or planning to make a change as a result of attending. Review our FOSS Evaluation Report here.

Each Spring, we fund the IAA ‘Spotlight on Public Engagement’, a programme of training around event planning and communications that directly supports the success of the festival. This valuable training equips researchers with the practical skills and confidence to take their work beyond academia. This year’s training included workshops on presenting, storytelling, event planning, event evaluation and identifying target audiences which all contributed to event success.

SUPPORT OFFERED BY IAA TEAM TRAINING WORKSHOPS EVENT PLANNING & REFINING EVENT DESCRIPTIONS & COPYWRITING CREATIVE MARKETING EMAILS & ASSETS SETTING UP OF TICKETAILOR BOX OFFICE TARGETED MARKETING TO REACH NEW AUDIENCES PAID META ADVERTISING AUDIENCE MANAGEMENT VENUE SOURCING LOGISTICAL PLANNING SUPPORT WITH DELIVERY COMMUNICATIONS & PR EVALUATION ADMIN & FINANCE

SKILLS TRAINING Skills training makes a significant difference in how confident researchers feel about creating and sharing their impact. It has noticeably helped them move beyond the “what” of their research and focus on the “so what?” and how to communicate with audiences in a way that really connects. This year, we delivered 22 workshops covering a mix of topics, from advanced impact skills, industry collaboration, commercialisation, and policy engagement to storytelling, public engagement, knowledge exchange, partnership building, and media training. Over 500 researchers attended workshops in 2025, which shows how strong the appetite is for this kind of support. The cost per head averages £80 for the entire year of training - exceptional value for such high calibre training. By opening our training programme to other faculties, and with additional support from the MRC and EPSRC IAAs, we’ve been able to broaden and strengthen our offer, with consistently excellent results (91% of researchers felt the training met or exceeded expectations). We also piloted a skills-accreditation scheme with GetTWOit, giving every participant access to a dedicated online community, validated micro-credential badges and certificates, and a personal development passport. The scheme has been well received, with many people highlighting its value and sharing their achievements on social media and in appraisals. Click here to view our full 2025 training programme “This was by far the most interesting and engaging study day I've been on in years!” ‘Camera Ready’: David Roylance and Anna Brees. “The IAA training has been varied and world class in my opinion.”

SUSTAINABLE PLACE With the skills agenda rising rapidly into the national policy spotlight, and recognised as a cornerstone of the UK’s future economic and social resilience, our work in this space has never been more critical. This forms part of our ESRC IAA R3 ‘Sustainable Place’ work package, which underpins the Surrey Civic University Agreement (CUA) with Royal Holloway University of London, and the University for the Creative Arts and aims to strengthen the societal impact of our social science research within local communities. Our team was proud to support Surrey County Council’s Skills Conference on 17th October, by planning and delivering a workshop that emphasised the critical importance of collaboration between universities, FE colleges, schools, employers, and local communities in building a skills system that leaves nobody behind. Professor Amelia Hadfield highlighted the value of partnerships that link policy, research, and community action, such as the Centre for Britain and Europe’s Community of Practice on NEETs and the Leatherhead mentoring pilot, in supporting young people and advancing the national ambition for two-thirds of the population to attain higher-level skills. Professor Ying Zhou shared insights from the Future of Work Research Centre, showing that while 94% of UK jobs involve tasks AI could perform, Generative AI is reshaping recruitment and work patterns, creating challenges for young people entering the labour market.

We also introduced the next stage of our work package: a followon collaboration workshop on 28 January 2026 at the Surrey County Council Chambers in Reigate. This session will bring together academics and regional stakeholders to co-develop actionable, seed-funded ESRC and AHRC IAA community projects across the three CUA universities, funded by AHRC and ESRC IAA’s. The ESRC will attend to observe and learn from this new model of pooled IAA funding and collaborative regional working.

Workshop themes: Reducing skills shortages for businesses Supporting young people who are not in education, employment, or training (NEET) Strengthening AI skills Investing in skills training for employees

A&H IMPACT PROJECTS In January 2025, we invited Arts and Humanities researchers to participate in our Dragons’ Den workshop. This allowed participants to develop and strengthen their impact projects before pitching to our FABSS “dragons” for funding of up to £3,000 per project. Building on the successful format of previous Dragons’ Den events, awards were made for a range of projects, including new applications to the AH IAA and follow-on activities from previous impact work in this area. In the spring, the IAA team ran a public engagement sandpit, led by Dr Lucy Ella Rose, to kickstart interest and discussion around an AHRC Being Human Festival 2025 Hub application. Attended by over 15 SAHCI academics, this provided a strong starting point to explore ideas, and in turn developed into a coherent, diverse, and inclusive programme of events. Throughout the year we have offered funding and support for an extensive variety of impact projects. These have included support for a number of larger projects, from theatre-based explorations of home with LGBTQ+ older adults to enhancing preparedness of public services to manage AI risk in multilingual communication, alongside a small number of rapid response projects that allowed for exploration and opportunity development. Principal Investigator

Project Title/Activity

Funding Amount

Dr Lena Mattheis (SLL)

Impact Generation Fund: Making queer and trans history accessible - and audible

£12,500

Dr Lena Mattheis (SLL)

Rapid Response: LUCIA Network

£2,000

Dr Femi AdeyemiEjeye (MM)

Impact Generation Fund: Perceptual quality evaluation for Mixed Reality Communications

£13,100

Dr Barbara Gentili (MM)

Impact Exploration Fund: Opera & Inclusivity: the future of the art form

£3,000

Dr Felix do Carmo (CTS)

Impact Generation Fund: Enhancing preparedness of public services to manage AI risk in multilingual communication

£19,720

Dr Mike Smalley (GSA)

Commercialisation Fellowship

£20,000

Dr Georgia Bowers (GSA)

Impact Generation Fund: The Lifehouse Impact Project

£19,996

Dr Stewart Nicholls (GSA)

Rapid Response: Cast recording of ‘Grab me a gondola’

£2,000

Dragons Den

Prof. Diane Watt, Dr Katy Peters, Dr Yetta Wong, Dr Angela Szczepaniak

£12,000

Blurb about £104,316 Lena Mattheis

ESRC IMPACT PROJECTS 2025 began with a high-energy Dragons’ Den workshop where researchers were able to deepen their understanding of impact and sharpen their pitching skills, before pitching ideas to a panel of “dragons” for funding. Five funding awards were made for a diverse range of social science projects, including expanding the reach of the Faith and Belief Competency Toolkit (Dr YingFei Heliot SBS), and Uncovering How Narratives of Blame and Responsibility Shape Jury Decision-Making (Dr Emily Finch, Law).

We have continued to invest in a broad spectrum of impact-focused activity (14 projects across the year) from rapid-response initiatives and early-stage exploration projects to more substantial programmes designed to generate meaningful, sustained change. We have seen previous IAA award-holders returning to build on their earlier success, as well as new applicants joining our pipeline after connecting with us at FOSS events and skillstraining workshops. Looking ahead, the momentum shows no sign of slowing, with a good number of new project applications for our February 2026 panel review. Principal Investigator

Project Title/Activity

Funding Amount

Dr Nicholas Kitchen (Pol)

Rapid Response: Soft Power Workshop

£2,000

Dr Joanna Moss (Psych)

Impact Generation: Achieving CPD accreditation for the FIND teacher training e-module

£19,978.63

Dr Joshua Andresen (Law)

Rapid Response: US Sanctions Regulations

£2,000

Prof Xavier Font (SBS))

Impact Exploration: Exploring the potential uses of neuroscience and AI to measure emotions, behaviours and human reactions to design more sustainable hospitality experiences

£7,375

Dr Fang Wang (CTS)

Rapid Response:Targeted Engagement to Extend the Reach of Research on Antidepressant Representations

£2,000

Dr Carla Bonina (SBS)

Rapid Response: Improving Innovation and Competition in Digital Platform Ecosystems Globally

£1,400

Prof Sabine Braun (CTS)

Impact Exploration: Making media work for everyone: Improving comprehension and enjoyment of audiovisual content for cognitively diverse people

£7,479

Dr Fabio Fasoli (Psych)

Impact Exploration: Body Image Resilience in Guidance, Health, and Teaching (BRIGHT)

£7,509

Dragons Den

Dr Emily Finch, Dr YingFei Heliot, Prof Gavin Hilson, Dr Erin Ling & Dr Simona Guerra awarded Dragons Den funding

£10,000

Blurb about £59,741.63 Lena Mattheis

ANNUAL REPORTING ESRC Annual Reporting 2023-2025 Year 2 of the ESRC IAA funding has seen the team significantly

expand

researcher

capability,

partnerships and impact across the University. As reflected in the 2025 ESRC reporting highlights (right), we have achieved strong numbers of impact

Projects/Events/Training

Public Engagement Events

Event Attendees

1041

Impact Projects Funded

Researchers Trained

644

Skills Training Workshops

Partnerships

142

Staff Engaged in IAA

In-Kind Contributions

£54,949

Follow-on Funding

£820k

Income to the University

£504k

Projects/Events/Training

Public Engagement Events

Event Attendees

590

Impact Projects Funded

Partnerships

Total Outputs

Follow-on Funding

£83k

projects, skills training workshops and public engagement

events.

The

Commercialisation

workstream has continued to strengthen its pipeline and secured Surrey’s first social-science spin-out. Civic partnerships have deepened through the Sustainable Place workstream, and income levels have risen, both in consultancy work and follow-on grant successes.

“IAA funding has been vital in enabling us to do stakeholder involvement work that will enable us to apply for an ESRC research grant. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to move forward.”

A&H Annual Reporting 2023-2025 This year’s AH IAA funding programme has welcomed a range of well developed impact projects, as it continues to build on Years 1 & 2. Annual reporting activity has allowed us to have a view of the breadth and depth of projects across SAHCI, including a greater number of Impact Exploration projects and an increasing number of project leads involved across disciplines. As the figures for 2025 highlight we have seen strong engagement in project opportunities, collaborations, training and public engagement activity.

“This funding has allowed me to explore entirely new avenues with research and partnerships with small businesses and charities... It has completely altered the way I approach research communication and impact work.”

Ready to take your social science research further? Get in touch to discuss funding, public engagement and training opportunities - we’d love to hear from you!

Contact Us esrc-iaa@surrey.ac.uk @esrc-impact-acceleration-surrey www.surrey.ac.uk/economic-and-social-researchcouncil-impact-acceleration-account

Reimagining RSE Dr Emily Setty ESRC IAA