“The optimistic art of the impossible- measuring impact of indigenous research in the era of historic denial and evidence based policy in higher education”

Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith

There are different ways for understanding research impact and providing evidence for making informed policies. Power relations play a significant role in how measuring impact, research metrics and performance measures are both constructed and implemented. More importantly power plays a role in determining the rules of the game, choosing the referees, identifying the teams, their captains and their coaches. It is an impossibility for many research approaches and especially for those working in community based research and those applying indigenous methodologies. I will discuss the hopeful and optimistic strategies that some of us have used to put our toes in the door, to disrupt such narrow prescriptions and to exercise our moral responsibility to be a general pain in the neck to systems that exclude us.