The School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sussex asked CommsConsult to conduct a Stakeholder Mapping Workshop for their researchers and knowledge exchange staff in July 2015.

The half day workshop covered the basics of stakeholder mapping as well as providing the participants with a host of tools to identify, prioritise and explore the more elusive, or unknown, stakeholders of their research projects.

The workshop presented an opportunity for both researchers and knowledge exchange staff to share and source solutions to the problems that they had encountered in mapping and understanding the needs of their  stakeholders during various research projects. Participants were asked to ‘think outside the box’ to identify stakeholders they could target and identify suitable pathways of engagement.

The workshop covered practical, hands on tools which could be utilised  individually or in groups, giving the participants insight into how valuable collaborative mapping can be in identifying, unpacking and understanding stakeholders and their needs throughout the research cycle.

The participants were presented with a suite of three different mapping methodologies which covered: the brainstorming process, refining the perceived influence of different stakeholder groupings and exploring innovative ways of mapping online stakeholders using social media. Tools included: Stakeholder mind mapping; Alignment, Influence and Interest Matrix (AIIM), Netmapping and Twitter Mapping.

  • Project Type: Workshop
  • Lead Unit: Training
  • Client: University of Sussex
  • Location: Falmer Campus, UK