The Oscar for Best Researcher in a Supporting Role Goes to…

The contemporary focus on academic impact primarily emphasizes initiatives undertaken by researchers that are potentially useful to practitioners. It pays very little heed to academics supporting practitioners’ initiatives to meet manifest societal needs. In this paper, we illustrate ways such support can be carried out. We do so by nominating six researchers from various disciplines for the award of “Best Researcher(s) in a Supporting Role”, defined as one or more academics who, motivated by compassion and taking their lead from how practitioners frame and pursue concerns that are important for society, support in scholarly ways practitioners in addressing those concerns. Our nominees are James Sulzer and Lindsay Karfeld-Sulzer, Denise Rousseau, multiple academics who have evaluated the success of the Imagination Library, Ann Burgess, Timothy Neale, and Hans Hansen.