Page 168 . Volume 12, Issue 2 November 2015 Editors’ Note: The following essay is iŶ ĐertaiŶ respeĐts a ĐoŵŵissioŶed iteŵ. Martin Barker heard its author present the substance of it at the Sheffield SPARC Conference in April 2015, and encouraged its author to write up her account. At one level, this is primarily a set of reflections on her experience as a holder of one of the UK-based Collaborative Doctoral Awards, awards which are premised on a working relationship between a university and a commercial or policy body. Sarah PriĐe here refleĐts oŶ the differeŶt forŵatioŶs of aĐadeŵiĐ aŶd ĐoŵŵerĐial styles of doing and presenting audience research. At another level – and the reason in particular that we invited Sarah to allow us to publish this – it connects back to a much longer and wider tradition of thinking about the differences between adŵiŶistratiǀe aŶd ĐritiĐal ŵodes of ĐoŵŵuŶiĐatioŶ researĐh – a division, and a deďate ǁhiĐh effeĐtiǀely took off froŵ Paul Lazarsfelds ;1941Ϳ essay on the topic. This is a topic which never quite goes away. We publish this essay as a starter- contribution to what we hope will be a wider and longer-term revisitation of this topic – see the Editorial Introduction to this issue. ______________________ Academic and commercial research: Bridging the gap Sarah M. Price, Sheffield Performer and Audience Research Centre, University of Sheffield, UK In the last few years, collaboration between arts organisations and academic researchers has been promoted by an increasing number of organisations. 1 In 2012, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) created Knowledge Exchange Hubs with the purpose of ĐoŶŶeĐtiŶg edžĐelleŶt researĐh iŶ the arts aŶd huŵaŶities ǁith a raŶge of Đreatiǀe aŶd cultural orgaŶisatioŶs ;AH‘C, KE Hubs for the Creative Economy). I myself am part of the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award programme, which joins PhD students to external partners for the full three years of their research. In addition, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) which assess the research quality of UK Higher Education Institutions now iŶĐludes aŶ eǀaluatioŶ of iŵpaĐt, that is the edžteŶt to ǁhiĐh researĐh is ďeŶefiĐial to the