Managing sensitive relations in co-produced planning research

Co-produced research is an increasingly prominent feature of universities. Collaboration can bring many benefits, offering unique and illuminating insights into the interface between theory, academia, policy and practice. Moreover, it often facilitates access to otherwise impenetrable fields of study. Yet it also brings immense challenges. This article describes the knowledge co-production process in a research project looking at national security, focusing on the collaboration between academia and government policy-makers. As demonstrated, critical tensions emerged in the commissioning process, in the conduct of the empirical work, and with regard to the dissemination of findings. The authors discuss various coping strategies employed to meet these challenges, which are applicable across other aspects of research co-production.