Th ere has been a recent shift of emphasis towards making social scientifi c investigation more policy relevant. University departments and funding bodies are increasingly using terms like ‘impact’, ‘deliverables’ and ‘outputs’ and more frequently aim to identify the benefi ciaries of research studies. Th ere has also been an important and timely debate in the social sciences about developing a ‘public criminology’ that is able to contribute to contemporary policy debates (Burawoy 2005; Currie 2007 ). Some leading criminologists have argued that the criminological industry is becoming increasingly socially and politically irrelevant and has little to contribute to the major debates on crime and justice (Austin 2003 ; Cullen 2011 ). Others have put the case for making criminology more policy oriented by asking ‘What is to be done?’ (Burawoy 2 005 , 2 008 ). Th is debate raises important questions about the role of the academic researcher.