Attention early career scholars! How can you strategise the improvement of your impact portfolio?

Join Dr Marietta van der Tol and Dr Anna Wood for an intensive workshop on impact planning.

Over two hours you will think together about:

• Identifying the impact of your existing research and how to communicate it in funding applications.
• Understanding and responding to funder expectations.
• Mapping relevant organisations, institutions, state bodies, and charities.
• Relationship-building and planning stakeholder engagement.
• Designing new research projects with social relevance and impact in view.

This session is suitable for PhD students and early career researchers.

The focus will be on those contemplating applications for early career fellowships and grants in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, drawing on the workshop leader’s experience and expertise. Senior researchers are also welcome to attend.

About the workshop leads

Marietta van der Tol

Dr Marietta van der Tol is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge.  She studied at Utrecht University from 2009 to 2014 (LLM Hons in law, MA in history) and then at Yale University from 2014 to 2016 (MAR Hons in history of Christianity). Her doctoral thesis, Politics of religious diversity: toleration, religious freedom and visibility of religion in public space (POLIS, University of Cambridge, 2020), explored expressions of tolerance and intolerance in contemporary constitutional law and politics in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

In 2020, she joined the Blavatnik School of Government as inaugural Alfred Landecker postdoctoral research fellow and in 2021 became a non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellow at New College. She was College Lecturer in Comparative Politics at St Peter’s College (Oxford) in 2023, followed by a full-time College Lectureship in Politics at Lincoln College (2023-2024), teaching in History & Politics and PPE.

She returned to Cambridge in October 2024. Her book, Constitutional Intolerance, was published in January 2025.

Anna Wood

Dr Anna Wood is an anthropologist studying poverty, politics, and development in Dakar, Senegal. Based in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge, she is a Research Associate and the Department’s Knowledge Exchange and Funding Facilitator. Anna is also a By-Fellow at Churchill College.

Anna’s PhD focused on the implementation of flagship social protection policies—a national cash transfer and universal health coverage—as received in a small informal settlement within the Senegalese capital, Dakar. She is now working on social housing, following ongoing eviction/resettlement from that site. 

Anna previously studied at University College London ( MSc Social and Cultural Anthropology) and King’s College London (BA History).

About this event

This event is sponsored by the Cambridge Interfaith Research Forum. 

Registration is recommended and includes chance to declare any dietary requirements. The venue is on the First Floor at the Faculty of Divinity.

Arrive promptly to grab free coffee & pastries.