St Mary’s University College Belfast has made its first submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF)— in the unit of assessment for Politics and International Studies. The REF is the new process for assessing the quality of academic research within UK higher education institutions. The results were released today (18th December 2014), and considering it was the College’s first inclusion in this type of research assessment, those involved should feel proud of the profile rating. Overall, 20% of the quality profile was recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour, with a larger percentage recognised nationally in terms of the same criteria. Those members of academic staff included in the submission offered four of their research publications for review by the main panel, along with two case studies indicating the impact of their research and an outline of the research environment that exists within the College.

The case studies provide an account of how the research has benefitted the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life—in short, its benefit beyond academia. In relation to the College, one of the impact case studies outlined how a member of academic staff was commissioned to work as an adviser for members of the Polish Parliament and for senators going into the Polish Presidency of the European Union Council in July 2011. The other impact case study was based on a project that was recognised by the European Commission as highly successful and as producing materials that were a valuable addition to the stock of resources available to European teachers. This was evidenced most recently when the federal state of Saarland in Germany included the project’s toolkit in its compulsory list of teaching materials for social studies subjects in post-primary education.

The result of the quality of research in Politics and International Studies at the College is a strong indicator that the community of researchers who work within this particular area are striving to develop their research capacity at both national and international levels.