York University’s 2012 Year in Review / Revue de l’année 2012 de l’université york

David Phipps, RIR-York
Not quite an annual report but we have crunched the numbers for York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit’s activities for 2012. As you can see, we were busy at home and on the road.
Sans être exactement un rapport annuel, nous avons compilé les chiffres relatifs aux activités de l’Unité de mobilisation des connaissances de York pour 2012. Comme vous pouvez le constater, nous avons été bien occupés à la maison comme sur la route.

This table illustrates the traditional metrics of our activities with calendar 2012 compared to total cumulative numbers since we began operating in February 2012. But numbers tell only part of the story. The rest of our activities are highlighted below.

Social media: this year we surpassed 100,000 views on our blog, Mobilize This!, 5500 views of our ResearchImpact YouTube channel and 3000 twitter followers.  We’re not Lady Gaga or Oprah or Justin Beiber but we’re rocking the social world of knowledge mobilization!
Capacity building sessions: This year saw a greater variety of capacity building sessions on and off campus offering workshops in social media, knowledge mobilization planning and internships. Some of these are delivered with faculty and community co-presenters.
Funding: In addition to the ongoing support and leadership of the Vice-President Research & innovation, York’s we received a $141,000 SSHRC Public Outreach Grant partnered with the CDN Homelessness Research Network and United Way York Region.
International Reach: This year saw us engaging with agencies from around the world. We hosted visiting scholars from the University of Sheffield, Scottish Agricultural College and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research (Australia). We also collaborated with academics, thinks tanks and government agencies from Sweden, UK, Australia, US, Ghana, Vanuatu, Argentina, and the Development Research Uptake for Sub-Saharan Africa (DRUSSA) network, a network of 24 African universities seeking to build capacity to make development research accessible for the benefit of their local communities – knowledge mobilization by a different name! This international reach helps to position York University, the ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche network and Canada as global leaders in knowledge mobilization.
Honours and Awards: This year we were privileged to be awarded a global best practice award by the EU-based Knowledge Economy Network. David Phipps was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his national leadership in knowledge mobilization and was again named as Canada’s most influential knowledge mobilizer in the Canadian KMb 100. In addition, the Canadian KMb 100 identified Mobilize This! and the ResearchImpact website as the most frequently read knowledge mobilization blog and website respectively.
Presentations:  York, on behalf of the ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche network were busy during conference season. We presented at the following conferences: K* Conference, Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum; Congress 2012; CAURA 2012; Innovation Partnership 2012; OCE Discovery 2012; Partners in Prevention 2012; Occupy Impact. We also made presentations at U Manitoba; Dalhousie; U. Toronto; U Saskatchewan. We also launched the call for new RIR members, applications due January 25.
Publishing: This year we continued our peer reviewed publications but also were published in some highly read international sources including the Guardian Higher Education Network and the London School of Economics Impact of Social Sciences blog. Our peer reviewed publications included an article on ResearchSnapshot clear language research summaries published in Scholarly and Research Communication, a book chapter on social media and knowledge mobilization and a report on knowledge mobilization and social innovation.
Impact: We helped support the launch of a new choreography, Buggzzz, in which the moves and costumes of York Faculty of Fine Arts professors were informed by the research of entomologists from York’s Biology Department. The Biology professors were present at the premier and co-facilitated a round table discussion with the Fine Arts professors.
And this year we uncovered an amazing impact story of the collaboration between knowledge mobilization intern, Naomi Nichols, and the Youth Emergency Shelter (YES) Peterborough. Their collaboration produced a novel life skills mentoring program and turned YES into a social enterprise generating revenue from operations and securing new funding streams. It also helped Naomi to win the PhD thesis prize from the Faculty of Education as well as result in numerous publications and a book in progress. Look for more on this amazing story in 2013.
2012 has been another great year for knowledge mobilization at York and in Canada. And since the world didn’t end on December 21, 2012 it looks like we’ll have the chance to do even better in 2013!