New global challenges, new knowledge actors, new forms of research: what higher education can learn from the research practices of NGOs

Academic research in the UK is facing an identity crisis. Universities are responding to a national ‘impact agenda’ (HEFCE et al 2011; 2017 Nurse 2015), which calls for the evidencing of applied uses of university research (Bastow et al 2013; Brewer 2013; NESTA/Alliance for Useful Evidence (2016) and the engagement of research users/mediators in research processes (e.g. Rickinson et al 2011; Facer et al 2012; Morton 2015; Wolff 2015), and may blur traditional boundaries around the role of academic research in relation to knowledge produced by other actors (including public-sector think-tanks, private-sector consultancy firms, the media and civil society organisations) (McCormick 2013; Shucksmith 2016).