Dean's Keynote: Professor Scott Eacott

You are invited to our next Dean's Keynote Series event on Thursday, 12th November 2026 from 2:30-3:30pm Qld Time / 3:30pm - 4:30pm NSW time.

The Dean's Keynote Series theme for 2026 is: Dissecting Influence: Critical Insights into Education and Education Research.  

We welcome all to attend this most important event.

Abstract

Education research has relatively little policy influence in Australia. Researcher attempts to claim impact from their work frequently conflate ‘reach’ (e.g., I published in an outlet with 60,000 readers) and ‘engagement’ (e.g., x people downloaded my paper) with impact (I have demonstrable evidence my work shaped actions). Slow processes such as ethics approval and publication in academic journals in combination with institutional norms that privilege output counts and journal metrics over whether work offers anything useful amplify the issues. Think tanks and lobby groups are more agile and usually better versed in the types of communication and relationship building that deliver influence. However, on a global scale, scientists are the most trusted profession, creating an opportunity for influence towards the public good.

In this presentation, drawing from my own successes and more importantly failures, I offer a framework for explicitly embedding influencing activities in research programs. Built on a series of data and evidence dependencies based on different audience needs, and an understanding of different types of influence, I build a case for having an ambitious agenda, a coherent theory of change, and baking your work into the infrastructure of the topic. Achieving this is possible by: being useful, without subservient, to partners; parking your ego; and taking a ‘What do we need to know next?’ approach. 

Professor Eacott leads the Housing Affordability and the Teacher Shortage (HATS) Lab in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney. The interdisciplinary research program of the HATS Lab is concerned with the intersection of the teacher workforce, the housing crisis, and the organisation of education. The central question of this research program is How do you get the right qualified teachers where they are most needed across the system? Professor Eacott and his team seek to develop tools for government, stakeholders, systems, and educators to better understand how best to meet legal, social, and cultural expectations in the provision of education.