Knowledge exchange in the social sciences: Knowledge ecosystems, networks and the social enterprising of research

The present chapter grapples with the recent policy focus on Knowledge Exchange (KE) in the UK higher education, by exploring emerging and/or spreading practices in social sciences research. We start by considering the emphasis on KE as developing alongside discourses of public engagement and quests for knowledge co-production vis-à-vis contemporary research governance regimes of performative accountability and an emphasis on the wider impact of research. In this context, we seek to unravel the elements of KE practice in social sciences research, drawing on a small-scale study with social scientists in one UK university. The study involved semi-structured interviews with social scientists from various backgrounds and research areas, all of whom were committed to this type of KE-rich research. Deploying a Foucauldian lens, and working with Stephen Ball's toolbox, we discuss the shifting spatialities and relationalities of research practice, tracing connections with wider, late-neoliberal governmental rationalities. We conclude by contemplating on the implications surrounding these ‘new sensibilities’ of researching, for social scientists' roles and the forms of knowledge to be produced.