6: Working With Non-Academic Collaborators

This chapter explores a UK perspective on working with non-academic collaborators in doctoral research. We consider the importance of collaborative doctoral research, its origins in UK research policy and what it can achieve. We look at a range of examples of current UK funding schemes which support this type of doctoral research, discuss ‘engaged research’ in the doctoral context as a new departure from industrial or practice-related collaborations and consider the benefits this approach brings to supervisors, doctoral candidates and research. We briefly describe Co(l)laboratory: a new, programme-level initiative designed to pilot cohort-based doctoral collaborative research as a civic partnership in Nottingham, and we share early learning from this programme in the form of seven recommendations for supervisors looking to be more involved in doctoral-level collaborations.