There has been a growing trend for higher education to be seen by the state as central to national economic success (cf Barnett, 1990; Brown, Lauder,&Ashton, 2011). In the process, the state, in many countries, such as the United Kingdom, has sought to influence higher education research and there are growing demands for universities to be more accountable for addressing the concerns of contemporary society. These demands are also reflected in changing relationships between researchers and the fields they investigate, as academics respond to calls for experts, such as university researchers, to integrate what they know now with what those who are practice-based want to do in the future (Lundvall&Archibugi, 2001). There is, therefore, a growing expectation, in the social sciences as well as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subject areas, that university-based researchers will increasingly work in collaborative ways with external organisations, such as commercial companies or other university-based research laboratories, to generate and test new knowledge at practice boundaries with potential end users (Gibbons et al., 1999), often involving co-configuration work, a form of knowledge creation that requires continuous expert-user interaction and active user involvement in designing new products and services (Victor&Boynton, 1996). However, such emphases set up a noticeable tension about the nature and purpose of academic research. Some university researchers react by embracing the new expectations that they collaborate across subject boundaries, becoming either more ‘user oriented’ (Gibbons et al., 1999; Rickinson, Sebba,&Edwards, 2011) or open to interdisciplinary work; whilst others react by pointing to the importance of preserving the right to inner dedication (Bernstein, 2000). The reality, we suspect, is that most academic researchers strive to find a balance between pure and applied research, while embracing the opportunity to communicate aspects of their work to a wider public audience and to provide advice to policy makers. © Gordon Wells and Anne Edwards 2013.
Author Keywords
Index Keywords
