The government is increasingly steering universities to demonstrate the impact of their research projects through the so-called ‘impact agenda’. Scholars are therefore expected to engage with industry and government to find out what the key issues might be and help to address them through research.
I offered this course in collaboration with Lionel Bently (Law) to provide a platform for scholars to engage critically with the impact agenda by entering in direct conversation with some of the music industry’s most influential stakeholders: the UK Intellectual Property Office, the Pirate Party, Google, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the International Federation of Musicians (FIM) and International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC).
The course sought a better understanding of how collaborations between academia, industry and government may be sustained in the long-term by working within a multi-disciplinary team on possible directions emerging from widely publicised contemporary policy challenges. While all parties benefited from the exchange, scholars stressed the importance of upholding their academic independence for collaborations to succeed.
The course was held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge with funding from the Mellon Centre for Disciplinary Innovation.