  There is increasing interest among funding agencies to understand how they
can best contribute to enhancing the socio-economic impact of research.
Interdisciplinarity is often presented as a research mode that can facilitate
impact but there exist a limited number of analytical studies that have
attempted to examine whether or how interdisciplinarity can affect the societal
relevance of research. We investigate fifteen Social Sciences research
investments in the UK to examine how they have achieved impact. We analyse
research drivers, cognitive distances, degree of integration, collaborative
practices, stakeholder engagement and the type of impact generated. The
analysis suggests that interdisciplinarity cannot be associated with a single
type of impact mechanism. Also, interdisciplinarity is neither a sufficient nor
a necessary condition for achieving societal relevance and impact. However, we
identify a specific modality -- "long-range" interdisciplinarity, which appears
more likely to be associated with societal impact because of its focused
problem-orientation and its strong interaction with stakeholders.
