The ways in which social science can enlighten public debate and contribute to policy formulation have a wide scope. Public and policy sociology, as discussed in Chapter Four, is one variant of that, but public engagement by academics has a more varied span than that. Engagement with non-academics is actively promoted by research funding bodies such as the UK Research Councils through a requirement to specify ‘user engagement’, ‘knowledge transfer’ and to produce ‘impact’ summaries of research. This is more than a UK issue, as higher education policy across large parts of the world has deepened pressures for academics to engage with publics beyond the academy, as can be seen in Badgett's (2016) ‘how to’ guide on being more effective in communicating research. As engagement and impact have become part of the audit culture of higher education, accounts of these have tended to bifurcate into either a celebratory and uncritical approach to public and policy engagement, or to decry the narrow and instrumental ways in which impact has come to be defined, especially by a neoliberal and market-based vision of higher education in the 21st century (Bailey and Freedman 2011, Sayer 2014).

That engagement and impact have become critical in the framing and pursuit of academic research is not in doubt, but what they mean is unclear, not least in terms of defining and agreeing on the meaning of these terms. The National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE), which exists to provide a space for developing and disseminating good practice in this area, sees engagement or public engagement as describing ‘the myriad of ways in which the activity and benefits of higher education and research can be shared with the public. Engagement is by definition a two-way process, involving interaction and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit’. It adds that that process is not something new; there are many and varied ways in which academics engage with wider society.

This is indeed so, although it raises a question about why impact and engagement have become important now.