These days academics have to shape-shift to suit a diverse range of audiences. What you include to apply for a grant will be very different from the way you present yourself when commenting on national issues, talking to school students, trying to build support for a citizen science project or engaging with government. With this in mind, it makes sense to prepare a range of CVs to suit different audiences.
Dr Katherine Andrews of Griffith’s Institute for Drug Discovery has recently written in Nature about using your CV to make an impact statement about your work.
She states: “My Impact CV […] is where I gather evidence that I can use to build impact stories targeted to different audiences.”
The point of an impact CV isn’t to replace the more traditional academic CV which lists qualifications, publications, grants and awards, among other things. Rather, an impact CV provides a complementary view of a person’s career and achievements by foregrounding the ‘real world’ impact your research has had. This kind of narrative can be important in outreach and engagement where achieving practical collaborations and outcomes is the key driver.
You can download the impact CV template from the AAMRI website, where you can also see more about how an impact CV works.
